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l^arbatli Bibinit^ Sctaol

AlBOVEB-HASVASD TffEOLO&IOAL LIBUST

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSEITS

RUSHTON DASHWOOD BURR

SlTliilt)' BehOOl, CU** «f its)

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Malaysia: Nature's Wonderland

16mo, net, 35 cents

India, Malaysia, and the Philippines

12mo, net, $1.00

BISHOP JAMES M. THOBURN

THOBURN-
CALLED OF GOD

W. F. 0U3HAM

THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN
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CONTENTS

CBArrMB PAOB

Foreword 7

I. The Man for India 13

II. Thoburn — Early Days 20

III. Unconscious Preparation and Con-

version 23

IV. Called to Preach 35

V. Called to Foreign Missionary

Service 41

VI. Called to Face a Life Task 64

VII. Called to Mobientous Experi-
ences: Early Baptism of Low-
Caste People 61

VIII. Called to Help Create a Woman's

Missionary Movement 71

IX. Called Across the Ganges 81

X. Led to Summon William Taylor . . 86

XI. Prepared and Called to Calcutta 96

XII. Called to Farther India 109

XIII. Called to a Great Adventure 125

XIV. Called to the Missionary Bishop-

ric 139

XV. Called to the Farthest East 148

XVI. Called to a Quiet Hour 162

XVII. Questions and Answers 170

XVIII. PERSONAL Tribute from Bishop

Warns 177

FOREWORD

Two men have profoundly affected the
writer during his life, in those deeper realms
of thought and feeling and purpose into
which we consciously admit but few persons.
Both of these men have become bishops of
the Methodist Episcopal Church. James
W. Bashford continues in the fullness of
matured powers not only to strengthen the
heart of the young church and wisely to
direct its plans in the great waking life of
China, but also to influence powerfully the
public life of the land of his manhood's adop-
tion. The other has lived out the full meas-
ure of his active years, and, as missionary,
statesman, and bolder, has won for hims^
a unique place in the annals of missionary
achievement. He still lives among us with
undinmied vision for the stars that fill his
sky. Amid the scenes of his youth, he
lingers amongst those who love him, an in-
spiration and a blessing.

At his request the writer hesitatingly un-
dertakes this brief recital of the capital

FOREWORD

events of a most eventful life. While he
hesitates, lest his unskilled hand may fail to
portray the great inspiring picture of a
nobly lived life, he yet recognizes certain
elements of fitness in being chosen as the
chronicler of the outstanding events of the
Bishop's life. For he knows somewhat in-
timately India and the neighboring islands ;
was the junior associated with the Bishop in
the founding of the Malaysia Mission — an
achievement which the Bishop has always
accounted his ^^magnum opus^* — and, above
all, holds the subject of this book in deep,
reverent affection. And lovers are the only
folks who see, for they, led by affection, go
past aJl outward seeilg and see the inner
truth and beauty.

To reassure the reader, let it be said at
once that Bishop Thobum's voluminous
records of his own life will be largely drawn
upon. All that this editor claims to do is
to so arrange the data as to put before the
reader the man in the high moments of his
lif ework. And, in these, Thobum will speak
for himself. The writer's words are merely
the thread on which the pearls of this rich
personality are strung.

FOREWORD

And, let it be noted, this does not design
to be a "biography." The Bishop's most
earnest wish is, not that his life story be
recorded, but that specific attention be called
to the fact of the divine leading in all the
important episodes of his life. He is among
those who hold the belief, with something of
intensity, that God's Spirit guides humble
and inquiring believers every step of their
earthly path ; and his desire is to reaffirm this
truth and glorify the covenant-keeping God
in reciting how, in one man's life, the voice
that has promised to say, "This is the way,
walk ye in it," has sounded in his ears and
has been literally verified in his life. He is
jealous that from the Christian heritage
shall not be abstracted, by any play of ra-
tionalistic thought, the comfort and the
strength vouchsafed to the Christian believer
who knows he is "called" not only to a special
career, but also, that in the various steps of
that career he may expect the guidance of
the "pillar of cloud by day" and "the pillar
of fire by night."

In the following conversation, which is re-
ported verbatim, the Bishop speaks for him-
self:

FOREWORD

"Bishop, why do you wish me to make a
record of the outstanding events of your
Hfe?"

"My immediate purpose is this, that God
has been in my life at important points, from
time to time; and so immistakably has he
been with me that I feel not only that it is
my duty to confess what I have received
directly from him, but I feel that I owe it
to my fellow men. In other words, my Hf e
furnishes a testimony to the fact that God
has been with me, not only in a general way,
all the time, but especially at set times and
in distinctive ways his presence has been im-
mistakable. And I would that all who know
me could have the same tokens of the Divine
Presence that I have enjoyed. So far as the
past is concerned, my mind rests upon cer-
tain instances, such as when I left college, I
believed that God led me out to become a
preacher of the message which he would give
me, and it has been so all along the way."

"How have these divine illuminations
come to you?'*

"It would be difficult to describe it in a
way which another would imderstand. Prob-
ably temperament has something to do with

FOREWORD

the method of illumination. But while, in
a general way, I have gone through these
experiences day by day, yet there have been
periods when there has been something like
special illumination of the mind and souL"

"With a clear direction as to which way
you should move?"

"Yes/'

"Are you conscious at the time of the
separation between what I might call the
divine impression, and the workings of your
own mind on the data?"

"No. My mind is in an inquiring mood,
for a shorter or longer time, and then comes
an impression which removes doubts and
gives me a consciousness that I am standing
on firm ground."

It is to illustrate this truth of the Bishop's
claim, that God has distinct direction for all
the courses of life, that we sketch the chief
events of his own career, letting him tell the
inner sources of motives and origins.

If the reading of the brief volume shall
quicken faith and deepen trust in an ever
present God, the Bishop's object will be ac-
compKshed. ^^ y. Oldham.

CHAPTER I

THE MAN FOR INDIA

The great contribution that the home
church makes to the peoples in foreign lands
is the gift of her choicest sons and daughters.
When opportunities for medical help, for
education, and for sanitation and industrial
development are opened to backward peo-
ples, or to civilizations that have not kept
step with the movements that have brought
us to the strange new day in which we live,
great service is rendered. But when, with
these gifts of material equipment, the church
sends carefully chosen men and women to so
use this equipment as to quicken the peo-
ple's understanding and arouse the slumber-
ing spirit, or to quicken it so that it may
throw oflp the spiritual fetters that arrest its
progress, the value of the gift is multiplied
many times. The doctor, if a "living soul,'' is
worth many times the hospital building; the
teacher, if a "quickening spirit," is a greater
factor in bringing new Kf e to a people than a
complete set of university buildings. In-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

deed, it may boldly be said that not only is
the contribution of chosen lives the greater
contribution, but it gives significance to all
the rest.

The increasing care of the church in select-
ing these agents of the gospel, that only duly
equipped and God-anointed men shall be
sent, attests our deepening belief in the mat-
ter. It is, therefore, with devout thankful-
ness to the great Father who holds all men
in his loving thought that we call attention
to the peculiar worth and felicity of the gift
the Methodist Episcopal Church made to
the peoples of India when, following the
leadings of the Holy Spirit, James M. Tho-
burn was selected and sent to that great,
peculiar, and difficult field.

Let us consider briefly the .field and the
man. India is peculiarly the "Orient."
Here, more than anywhere else, life is held
in molds or runs in channels most remote
from the thoughts, or even the comprehen-
sion, of the West. But at the heart of this
strange and complex life is a burning, pas-
sionate regard for religion, and with it a
dreamy, mystic conception of what religion
is and wherein it consists. Strange and

THE MAN FOR INDIA

subtle philosophies, rooted in pantheism or
in thoroughgoing agnosticism, have filtered
down into the poetic and imaginative soul
of even the plain and unlearned people. And
the masses, though unreasoning and inar-
ticulate, are yet spiritually penetrated with
a vague sense that life is illusory and tran-
sient. Add to this an almost imiversal pre-
possession to belief in the transmigration of
the soul and a devotion and surrender to the
customs and traditions of the past. It will
at once be seen how this fragment of "the
all" passing through its illusory experiences,
with its "now" fixed in the matrix of aU its
yesterdays and shaping all its morrows,
would vehemently resist any teaching of a
discrete individual soul, with the possibiKty
of its seeking and finding in a Saviour God
both pardon for past sin and power to assert
its moral sovereignty and to exercise its
spiritual energy, moment by moment, as the
days come and go. Further, add to this a
very deep pride of race, a high religious con-
ceit, and a strong suspicion of all things new
and imfamiliar, and then judge the charac-
ter of the gospel agent whom you would
select to send to India.

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

We would immediately pass over many a
man admirably fitted to serve at home, or
among some differently constituted people
—the man of dogmatic speech ; the man with-
out delicate antennae to discern and quick
susceptibiKty to feel and sympathize with
the earnest spiritual struggles and aspira-
tions of men of utterly other mental training
and outlook ; the man whose religious teach-
ing can all be conveyed in clear, logical
propositions, and to whom all movements
must be in direct straight lines to escape the
reproach of insincerity; the man without
reverence for the past and, therefore, with-
out any fellow feeling for that mental atti-
tude which greatly dreads to assert the in-
dividual as over against both the solid tradi-
tions of the centuries and the social caste
organism in which those traditions are pre-
served; the man of bold, venturesome spirit,
who knows nothing of what it costs a trem-
bling, hesitant soul that has been built into a
social and religious fabric, like a brick in a
wall, to seek to break out of that wall to the
dismay and, indeed, to the rending of the
integrity of the whole order to which it be-
longs. In a word, your straightforward,

THE MAN FOR INDIA

honest, vigorous, sympathetic, and aggres-
sively energetic man, bent on taking short
cuts everywhere, and having all others go
across lots with him, is not the man you
would select for dreamy, nonventuresome,
conservative, staid India.

In Thobum, boy though he was when he
first appeared as a missionary, were the op-
posites of all the undesirable qualities we
have sketched, for he strangely combined
great personal faith and conviction of the
divine truth of the Christian rehgion with
the utmost appreciation of the blind strug-
gles toward the Light of many a devout
Hindu "seeker after God." He seemed,
with less eflfort than most Western men, to
enter into the subtle, mystic thinking of
India. Himself a singular blend of the mys-
tical enthusiast and the clear-seeing, prac-
tically minded man of America, in him the
East and West met and each supplemented
and fulfilled the other as in very, very few.
The clear, penetrating intellect for affairs;
the eye to see, with capacity to do, is in him
so happily blended with a mysticism that
borders on the realms of the superstitious
without ever touching the line, that we might

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

truthfully know one side of him without ever
suspecting the other. In the commingUng
and the balance of these very diverse ele-
ments, however, has been his marvelous
strength. Without this analysis of this man
we could neither understand nor explain the
accomplishments of his fruitful Ef e.

Then, too, he is a rehgious democrat. He
has known nothing of race prejudice nor of
social caste feeling. Thrown with men of
the highest social and official positions, he
has ever been eager to approach and has been
easily accessible to the low-caste and the out-
caste of all races. Men and women have al-
ways been to him the subjects of his deep
concern; and he has ever seen not the
drunken white man, or harlot, or low-caste
Hindu, or abusive Mohammedan, nor the
military general or commissioner or high-
placed man of wealth, but in all and each he
has seen an immortal being, the defaced
image of God, with infinite possibihties and,
therefore of large potential value. And he
has been the servant and the brother of all,
seeking to recover each to the restored image
of his Saviour God. A man he is of deep

religious fervor, of unshaken rehgious con-
is

THE MAN FOR INDIA

viction, of intense belief that the gospel he
bears is the only real hope of mankind — a
man, too, of a loving heart, of democratic
spirit, holding all men in reverence for the
possibilities that are in them ; with eyes to see
God in unusual settings and to see large
values in truth under unusual forms and
amid unfamiliar surroundings ; a man with
kindness of heart, of sacrificial spirit, eager
to serve and, with it all a man of gracious
manners and winsome speech.

How splendid the gift to India the readers
of this book will see, if the writer can at all
interpret to them the real James M. Tho-
burn.

CHAPTER II
THOBURN— EARLY DAYS

"If you would build a man, begin with his
grandmother." Thoburn's grandmother was
"a woman of strong character, notable cour-
age, and decided views in both religious and
political matters/' Her husband was nomi-
nally a Unitarian; but, seeking controversy
with a visiting Methodist preacher, he was
so impressed by that doughty traveler that
the Crawford home in the little village of
Rallo, Coimty Antrim, Ireland, became the
local headquarters of Methodism.

From this Irish home came Jane Lyle
Crawford, a young woman of marked
quality, tinged with the mystic quality that
she was so notably to impart to her son.

Meanwhile, in another Irish village named
MoUusk, near Belfast, another Methodist
itinerant, meeting a young Irishman stand-
ing in the door of his widowed mother's cot-
tage, shook hands with him heartily and
asked his name.

THOBURN— EARLY DAYS

"My name is Matthew Thobum/'

"Well, Matthew, I am going to preach
this evening in yonder cottage; won't you
come and hear me and bring your mother
with you?"

The couple went. That evening young
Matthew was informally left in spiritual
charge of the deeply impressed company as
"class leader'' until the preacher should re-
turn. A class leader and an eflPective ex-
horter Matthew Thobum remained through
life. It was when addressing a meeting
Matthew met Jane Lyle Crawford.

She recognized in him at once the very
person whom she believed God had shown
her in a dream of the night when, sorrow-
ing for her dead father, God had strength-
ened her heart by assuring her she had a life-
work to do, and showed her the partner of
her life career. This belief in visions and
experiences of them recurs strangely in her
son's life.

The Thobums soon after their marriage
sailed for America and settled in Saint
ClairsviUe, Ohio, where was bom on the
seventh of March, 1836, their seventh child,
a son, whom they named James Mills. Other

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

children of this Irish family in America
were an older sister — Ellen, afterward Mrs,
General B. R, Cowen, for years the splendid
leader of the Woman's Foreign Missionary
forces in the Cincinnati Branch; and Isa-
bella Thobmn of sainted memory, a woman
of rare power and abihty, one of the first two
women missionaries of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church to any foreign field and the
f omider of the first Christian Woman's Col-
lege in Asia — ^the Isabella Thoburn College,
in Lucknow, India. "God bless the Irish."
He does ; and has often used them to convey
his blessing, as when he sent two such as the
Thobums, James and Isabella, to India.

CHAPTER III

UNCONSCIOUS PREPARATION
AND CONVERSION

James was a bright lad, and his discern-
ing mother anticipated greatness for her boy,
as mothers have ever done. When coming
from Belfast, in Ireland, to her brother in
Guernsey County, Ohio, before James was
born, she saw beside the road the handsom-
est building she had yet seen in America. It
was a four-story brick building which still
stands beautiful and unshamed among nu-
merous and handsome buildings which now
surround it on the campus of one of west-
em Pennsylvania's best-equipped schools —
Allegheny College. It was Bentley Hall
— and many an Alleghenian who reads these
lines will both recall with affection old Bent-
ley Hall, and send thoughts of gratitude
and thanks to President Crawford, whose
magic wand has surroimded Bentley Hall
with other noble buildings.

When James was fourteen and considered
by his father to be a very bright lad, they

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

were visited by a young college graduate,
the late Dr. W. A. Davidson.

"One evening when he was with us, as we
sat around our hospitable fireplace, my
father asked him to test my knowledge of
algebra, remarking at the same time that I
had been through my algebra more than
once. The preacher very readily imdertook
the task, but finding that I knew nothing
about the science, except the method of 'do-
ing the sums,' he turned abruptly to my
father and said, * Your little boy knows noth-
ing about algebra.' To me this was a start-
ling annoimcement. The teaching of those
days was often imperfect, and I had not yet
learned how to study on the independent
basis. Our young pastor then explained the
situation and kindly advised me to go back
to the first page of arithmetic and begin all
over again. He added that he would advise
me to go to Allegheny College, where he
himself had graduated, and not to rest until
I had completed a full college course. I
resolved to follow his advice, but little
dreamed that in the early future a way
would be opened for me, but only through
bereavement and sorrow."

PREPARATION— CONVERSION

His father died, leaving a small estate to
be divided among many children. But it
was not the Thoburn way to be discouraged.
The mother managed to find a little money
for her son. "She gave me $162.50, and,
telling me to spend this carefully, she sent
me away, with her blessing."

"I understood perfectly well that this
small sum would not suffice to keep me very
long, but I was still young, with some of
my boyhood and all of my youth ahead of
me, and did not for a moment feel anxious
for my financial future. I used all possible
economy, and still remember that when I
returned at the end of seven months I had
expended only $87.50." It was character-
istic of the independent spirit of the boy,
even as early as in his fifteenth year, that, on
arriving in Meadville, Pennsylvania, instead
of "calling on President Barker and deliver-
ing my letter, I set off immediately to find a
boarding house, and in the course of the
afternoon succeeded in finding a good place
on the brow of the hill overlooking the town
and about half a mile from the village. Four
young men and a boy somewhat younger
than myself made up the company of stu-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

dents who shared with me the shelter of my
new home. On Monday morning, August
23, 1851, my name was enrolled as a student
of Allegheny College, and I selected my
studies without asking or being asked a ques-
tion of any kind. When this was done to
my satisfaction I went in the afternoon to
call on Dr. Barker, our college president,
who read my letter of introduction, asked
me a few questions, and expressed himself as
satisfied with my arrangements which I had
made. Six years later I received my diploma
from his hands."

Concerning his religious condition at this
time, he says: "I was not a member of the
church, simply a well-meaning boy, in my
fifteenth year. I had never been prayerless
in my life. From my earliest consciousness
I had been taught to pray, even if I had to
do so in silence, or probably after getting
into bed. I never omitted it. I took no part
in the religious life of the college, until my
awakening. During my second year at col-
lege, at the time of revival, I became very
deeply awakened. This was increased by
the conversion of my brother David, who
was with me. His conversion was clear, and

PREPARATION— CONVERSION

the effect was permanent in his case. I went
forward for prayers in a great religions re-
vival then in progress, at the old brick
church, but found no light. The meeting
was managed very badly. A boy such as I
got little attention, and the advice given was
simply random expressions which led no-
where. The college president gave me a
week's absence from my recitations, but even
when alone I made no progress.''

The reason is evident; for young Tho-
burn was eminently reasonable in his ap-
proaches to the spiritual life. He has never
been favorable to emotional outbursts. Per-
haps he has not recognized their value with
lethargic natures, where there is knowledge
that needs to be galvanized into action.

The entire episode is so important that a
full statement from the Bishop follows:

"On Sunday morning I went to church
with a young man from Pittsburgh. As we
went down to town I was full of spirits and
quite gay in my manner, but all the time I
was more or less moved by feelings which I
did not understand. We entered the church,
which was crowded, and found seats in a
remote comer of the gallery. Bishop Kings-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

ley, who was then professor of mathematics
in om* college, preached. His theme was the
final judgment given in the book of Revela-
tion, *And I saw a great white throne/ etc.
The familiar words impressed me deeply,
and as the sermon proceeded I began to be-
come agitated in a peculiar way. The ser-
mon was impressive and at times eloquent,
but a part of it seemed to me speculative
and in a measure weak. But I was soon in
no mood to notice the merits or demerits of
the sermon. Like Paul in olden times, the
professor reasoned of righteousness and
judgment, and the impression made upon
me was like that made upon the sinner in
olden times. I trembled — ^trembled until I
found myself trying to hold my knees steady
lest my student friend should notice my agi-
tation. But I soon became oblivious to all
considerations of this kind, and determined
that I would try and make my peace with
God at once.

"At the close of his sermon the professor
called on all who were awakened to a sense
of their danger to come and kneel at the
altar, while the people prayed for them. My
mind was fully made up, and I turned at

PREPARATION— CONVERSION

once to my friend and proposed that we go
forward together. A blow in the face could
hardly have startled him more. He was al-
most dmnb with astonishment, but managed
to decline my proposal. Dr. Robbins, who
sat near us, overheard my remark, and kindly
advised me to go alone. This I would have
done in any case, and I rose, picked my way
down among the young men and boys who
crowded the stairs, and walked forward and
fell upon my knees and wept bitterly. When
the singing ceased Dr. Barker was asked to
lead in prayer. He was evidently deeply
moved, and began to pray in language which
I could easily adopt as my own. I have
often thought that if the people around had
only kept quiet so that I could have heard
that prayer to its end I might have been led
step by step to the cross, and thus have found
Christ as a living Saviour at the very out-
set. But it was not so to be. A score of men
and probably women too, began to pray in
loud tones, and in a moment all was con-
fusion around me. No one came to instruct
me, and, indeed, it seemed as if no one
thought further about me. I had gone for-
ward for prayers, and all took it for granted

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

that in some way or another I could come out
all right. For five successive nights this
routine continued. I could hear nothing and
understand nothing. Now and then I would
hear some one shouting above me, 'Look up,
my brother,' or some such expression of the
kind, but only once in the course of five eve-
nings was an inteUigent effort made to find
out my real condition and teach me how to
trust in Christ. This was done by Profes-
sor Hamnett, who spent some time in trying
to find out my difficulties and to lead me
into the hght.

"In later years I have often been led to
protest against the way in which this kind
of work is too often done. In many places
invitations are given for awakened persons
to come forward for prayers, but when they
accept the call a scene of disorder takes the
place of intelligent prayer, and instruction
is made nothing of. Once not very long ago
I heard a preacher lu-ging the people to
pray aloud and all together : 'People may not
understand you, but God understands you.
Don't be afraid to let yoiu* voices be heard,'
etc. In Paul's day it was not considered a
light thing to pray with the understanding,

PREPARATION— CONVERSION

but in some places this counts for little

now."

Following this he joined the church, but
God would not let one for whom and from
whom he expected great things, to rest in
any such "twilight of the soul."

His money having given out, he was
obliged to find a place as a teacher. This
he did in Lloydsville, Ohio ; and, while teach-
ing there, a revival of religion commenced,
and the method of its progress was much
better suited to the brooding young teacher.
He says that while attending the village
church a revival of rehgion occurred in
which many young people, were converted.
The pastor made the announcement that
Mr. Thoburn would lead the class meeting
consisting of these young Christians. "He
added that the first meeting would take
place in the schoolhouse the next morning
at nine o'clock. This was startling news. I
had never prayed audibly in my life. I knew
nothing about some mysteries of the spirit-
ual life with which most of the members of
my class had already become familiar, but at
last I saw it was imperative that I should
obey. I accordingly went to the meeting

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

and found a list of twenty-seven members
and probationers who had been assigned to
me for spiritual oversight. I told them
frankly how I stood, but added that I in-
tended to do my best, and leave the result
to God. A visitor led the devotions that day,
and before the next Sunday came round I
was in the light, and found it a joy to pray,
or speak, or do anything that came to me in
the way of my duty as a servant of Jesus
Christ.

"In these later days I often hear in song
the words of the refrain, 'Trust and obey.'
I had tried to trust, but had assumed that
I could not obey. Now the light had come,
and life had become sweet, and the service of
Christ was like daily food. The days went
pleasantly and rapidly by, and all too soon
the date came round at which I had deter-
mined to return to college. My class of
twenty-seven had increased to over fifty, and
sweet harmony and love had prevailed in all
our meetings and social intercourse. If I
had found it hard to gain an entrance into
this little village, I found it much harder to
get away from it. The directors were ready
to meet any and every possible demand, and

PREPARATION— CONVERSION

the people with one voice begged me to re-
main. The circuit preacher, the Rev. N. C.
Worthington, advised and urged me to enter
the Conference at once, and assured me that
the door was wide open for me to enter. But
something, a f eehng which I could not define,
impelled me to go back to college. I was
only nineteen, and very youthful in appear-
ance, and wisely judged that I was too young
for the responsibilities of Conference mem-
bership, even if the question of my call to
the work of preaching had been clearly and
definitely settled. As yet, however, this was
still an open question with me. I was not
siu-e that God had chosen me for this work,
and appreciated the danger of a mistake in
a matter in which there was so much at stake,
both for the church and myself. I accord-
ingly bade adieu to Lloydsville and the dear
circle of young people to whom I had be-
come greatly attached, and in the early
autumn returned to Meadville and entered
the junior class in Allegheny College."

Thus did Grod clearly lead this young dis-
ciple into the clear light of the knowledge
of personal salvation, and the second great
step was taken in the fitting of a strong mis-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

sionary for that wonderful career in which,
amid strange people and in other tongues,
he was to declare unto many the gospel of
"the remission of sins" through faith in the
atoning Saviour.

CHAPTER IV
CALLED TO PREACH

Is there a distinctive "call to preach," or
is much of what is so recorded in religious
biography the mere subjective impression of
the young mind gathered largely from tra-
ditions current in pious circles ?

If a young man is a sincere Christian, has
a good education and agreeable manners,
possesses some powers of utterance and some
facility in making friends and in securing
the cooperation of others in religious pro-
jects — ^when he considers his lifework — ^may
he not confidently assume that in the or-
dained ministry he will find a suitable career?

The question is raised not to attempt an
answer, or even to raise a discussion, but
simply to record how one young man found
his way into this sacred calling, who has
proved, in his own case at least, the validity
of the claim that God, in this most practical
day, still continues to distinctly convey to the

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

inquiring mind his will regarding the par-
ticular investment of the individual life.

On this subject Bishop Thoburn feels
deeply, and said in regard to his own per-
sonal experience : "When I began to preach
I soon began to feel the need of a clear and
definite call to that work. I had conscien-
tiously come to the conclusion that God would
have me preach the gospel of Jesus Christ,
but when I seemed to preach in vain, when
people listened and yet did not seem to hear,
and when no tangible result appeared in any
quarter, I began to feel that hf e under such
conditions would be insupportable. One
afternoon during a series of meetings in
Marlborough, Ohio, I went out into the
woods near the village, and kneeling alone
among the branches of a fallen maple tree,
I talked the matter over with my Saviour,
and there alone with him I received my clear
and distinct commission to go and preach his
gospel to dying men. I heard no words, but
the commission could not have been more
specific and clear had the visible Son of God
said to me, 'Go preach my gospel.' From
that hour I could preach with or without
visible results. A foundation of adamant

CALLED TO PREACH

had glided under my feet, and I knew for
Whom I was to speak, and what the message
was with which I had been intrusted."

He says on the general subject: "The
whole subject of divine calls should be
studied not only more carefully, but also
more generally than has been usual in the
past. In a great multitude of cases no
special direction is needed, but when it is
needed, to what extent is it expected, and
how are God's tokens to be interpreted? A
very wide door opens before us when we ask
these questions, and God has been explicit
in promising help. *In all thy ways acknowl-
edge him, and he shall direct thy paths.' I
was left in no doubt or uncertainty concern-
ing my call to missionary service in India.
Many tokens were given, and many incidents
were made to *work together.' "

His mind was now fixed. His salary was
but one hundred dollars a year, and more
lucrative employment was offered him. But
he knew he was "called to preach." His
ministry in the homeland was brief, for he
was soon to go to. his real life task in a far
country. But how intelligent, sane, and
fruitful his home ministry was in its less

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

than two years may be learned from his own
record,

"My last special work before leaving my
circuit was in the village of Greensburgh,
Ohio. My senior preacher had been detained
by illness in his family, and had asked me to
take charge of a series of revival meetings
at that place in his absence, and I was more
than glad to do so. Up to this time I had
never had charge of meetings of this kind,
and for several reasons I coveted the privi-
lege. The village was not large, but it con-
tained three churches, and a majority of the
people were communicants. I met with few
difficulties at the outset, but very soon dis-
covered that we were going to have enough
to do. When I requested awakened persons
to come forward for prayers there was an
immediate response. Quite a niraiber came,
and there seemed to be deep and genuine
f eehng on the part of most of them. But the
church was small, and the vacant space
around the pulpit was limited, and it was
simply impossible to instruct the seekers in-
telligently. Although much good resulted,
yet the main result was not satisfactory. Sin-
ners were not converted. The persons who

CALLED TO PREACH

came out publicly to ask for prayers were
in some cases crowded aside, and the general
impression made was unfavorable,

"After vainly trying to overcome this dif-
ficulty and finding it impossible to do so in
such cramped quarters, I announced I would
be in the chiu-ch at 4 o'clock the following
afternoon, and would meet any persons who
wished to have a talk with me about their
spiritual interests. To my surprise, when I
repaired to the chiu-ch at the appointed hour
I found so large a company that it seemed
like a congregation met for a service, and
the difiiculty I experienced was that there
were too many for a free talk with each
separately. I therefore spoke to the entire
company. The result surprised my expecta-
tions. Many professed to see the way of
faith clearly, and to emerge out of darkness,
or at least twilight, into the clear light of
God. All through these long years I have
remembered with pleasiu-e and gratitude
those meetings which I was permitted to
hold on the eve of my departure for my
home in the distant East, and in later
days I have often found occasion to repeat
the plan pursued in that early day. All per-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

sons, especially all young persons, when
seriously concerned about their spiritual in-
terests, not only need instruction in the gen-
eral sense of that word, but they need it in
spiritual measure, line upon line, precept
upon precept, and the utmost care should
be taken to adapt the teaching in such cases
to the special condition of the party con-
cerned."

CHAPTER V

CALLED TO FOREIGN MISSION-
ARY SERVICE

In the days of his unconscious preparation
for the work before him, when he was but
seventeen years old, he purchased a book not
too attractively named Youthful Piety,
which "contained two sermons by Dr, Olin/'
The reading of these powerfully affected
him:

"One day during the play hour I walked
out under the trees and was reading one of
these sermons when I came upon this pas-
sage: * Several of our great benevolent enter-
prises which are rapidly extending their in-
fluence to the remotest nations of the earth,
were projected by young men while they
were still undergraduates; and Mills, and
Judson, and Newell passed immediately
from the schools into the distant lands where
they laid the foundations of Christian em-
pires/

"As I read these words a very remarkable
impression was made upon my mind and

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

heart. Up to that hour I had never felt any
special interest in foreign missions, but in
a moment, almost like a gentle flash of light,
an impression was made upon my mind that
here was to be my lif ework. At some time,
in some way, I was to be sent out to some
distant land where my life was to be
devoted to missionary work. This conviction
or manifestation, or perhaps vision would be
a better word, was very clear, and in after
years I recalled the fact that the word *em-
pires' had made a distinct impression on my
mind. A great, a very great, work was to
be done. Nations were to be evangelized,
empires were to be founded.

"The unexpected impression was not wel-
comed by me, and I was more than willing to
be persuaded that it had been a mere flight
of fancy; but the impression made had been
too deep and too distinct to be easily eflfaced.
I have noticed all through life that I am
rarely moved to speak freely of my deepest
convictions, and sometimes I have been re-
minded of our Saviour's request to the three
favored disciples to *tell the vision to no
man.' In later years I have felt no reticence
in speaking on the subject, but at the time

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

I could not have explained the incident
clearly, and might have been misled by
honest but mistaken friends. As far as any
religious expectance was concerned, I was at
best walking in a very dim twilight, and was
by no means qualified to form a correct
opinion upon a manifestation of this kind.
As a matter of fact, however, from this time
forward I was never able to dismiss from my
mind a misgiving that my ultimate destina-
tion would be some field in the great heathen
world."

Five years later he began to be inwardly
disturbed, and slowly but surely he was
reaching the conclusion that he was to go to
India.

But God, who, in his grace, talks to the
deeps in men through the Holy Spirit, will
also through his providence confirm the in-
ward impression by opening the door of op-
portunity. Perhaps it may be said there are
three voices in which God speaks to his obedi-
ent and listening servants : in their own souls,
through the voice of the church, and through
the door of opportunity. Happy is he whom
all three voices call imitedly, each confirming
the others.

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

But what if any of these three voices fail
to call? He would better wait prayerfully,
patiently. If it be God*s plan for him, God
will utter himself so that the depths within
and the breadths without will answer to each
other, and the way will be made plain. And,
if there be times of uncertainty and waiting,
may these not be for the testing of faith and
added discipline of soul? In James Tho-
burn's case the inward pressure presently
found the outer response in opportimity and
invitation. He writes :

"There began to flit across my heart a mis-
giving that my work in Ohio was nearly over,
that my call to missionary work was soon to
be brought to a definite issue, and that the
field of my future labor would be India.
How this definite and disquieting conviction
began I cannot tell. I never could recall its
origin, or tell how it had taken possession of
my mind. I only know that the issue was
at last being forced upon me, and must soon
be decided definitely for all time to come.
One day I came in from the post oflice and
sat down to read The Christian Advocate
and Journal, at that time edited by Dr. Abel
Stevens. The leading editorial was an ap-

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

peal to the young men of the church, and it
closed with a statement that six young men
were urgently needed for India, and asked
where they were to be found, I was power-
fully moved by the appeal, not so much by
anything it contained as by a strong impres-
sion that I ought to be one of the six young
men to go forth in response to the call, I
dropped the paper and fell on my knees, and
promised God that I would accept the call
if only he would make it clear that he sent
me, I asked for some token, for some
definite indication that I was called from
above, not only in the general way to be-
come a missionary, but to that special field,
and at that special time. I had not long to
wait for an answer.

"Strangely enough, I had not, up to this
time, sought counsel from any Christian
friend, I had barely mentioned the fact, on
two or three occasions in the course of two
or three years, that I had more or less of a
conviction that I should become a mission-
ary; but for reasons which I did not then
understand, I felt averse to speaking to inti-
mate friends on the subject,

"I had thus far felt more and more like

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

keeping silence about the matter, but now
a point was reached where I felt that I must
speak; I might be mistaking my convictions.
I had promised to obey the voice of the
church, and, if God spoke to me directly,
he would also speak to me through the
church. If he were to bid me go and at the
same time bid the church to send me, the
latter call would be a strong confirmation of
the former. My presiding elder was the im-
mediate channel of authority through which
I received the commands of the church, and
hence I resolved to seek his advice. If he
thought favorably of the matter, I would
take further steps ; but, if he disapproved of
it, I would pause and wait for more light;
or, possibly, dismiss the subject from my
mind altogether."

Meanwhile, the God who was talking to
the young preacher in the depths, was has-
tening to him in the person of the presiding
elder :

"He came at an early hour, having ridden
on horseback from the nearest railroad sta-
tion, and met me at the house of Brother
Peter Keener, a cabinet-maker, who was one
of the few members we had in that French

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

settlement. Keener's house was one of
my familiar stopping places, and at the
head of the stairway there was a tiny little
room, barely large enough to contain a bed,
a chair, a table, and a candlestick, where I
had often slept when on weekly rounds on
the circuit. It was a snowy morning, and
the presiding elder was sitting with his feet
to the stove, which stood in the cozy little
room below, when he remarked :

" *I met Bishop Janes on the train this
morning.'

" ^Bishop Janes !' I replied. *What can
he be doing out here?'

" *He is on his way West, looking for mis-
sionaries for India. He wants six immedi-
ately.*

"My heart leaped into my throat, but be-
fore I could say anything the elder con-
tinued :

" 'James, how would you like to go?'

" *It is very singular,' I said, *but I
have come here with the special purpose
of asking your advice about going to
India.'

" *Well, I must tell you that you have been
in my mind all morning. I incline to think

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

you ought to go. I have felt so ever since
the Bishop told me of his errand/

"I went upstairs to the little prophet
chamber and knelt down to seek for guidance
from above, but I could not pray. God
poured his spirit upon me from on high, and
my heart so overflowed with a hallowed feel-
ing of love and joy that I could not utter a
word. Before I could ask, God had an-
swered. It was not so much a call to India
that I received as an acceptance for India.
I did not receive any message, or realize any
new conviction, or come down from my
sacred audience with God feeling the matter
was forever settled, and yet that hour stands
out in my hf e as the burning bush must have
stood in the memory of Moses.

"It was my burning bush. It has followed
me through all the years which have passed
like a Divine Presence ; and a hundred times
when wearied and oppressed with doubts and
discouragements have I fallen on my knees
and pleaded with God, by the hallowed
memories of that hour of blessing, to prove
faithful to the promise of his love and care
which was then burned into my very soul. It
has been one long inspiration, an unfailing

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

source of strength and courage, when these
virtues seemed about to fail.

"Practically, the question of my going to
India was settled when I came down from
that little room, but I knew it not,"

Long years afterward, when the reality
and eflSciency of the call had been tested
through over fifty years of phenomenal serv-
ice, he says concerning it :

"My call was clear and distinct, aside al-
together from the incidents connected with
it, and has stood out in my past life like a
mountain peak in a level plain. The thought
of doubting it has never for a single moment
occurred to me. It was specific. I was to
go to India. I was to spend my life there.
I was to go for my Master, the same Saviour
as the one calUng me. I was to go in his
name — ^to represent him there. No hiding
place for doubt was left for me. The sun
of righteousness iUuminated my whole
horizon."

There is both pathos and himior in the
Bishop's account of the sailing of that early
group of missionaries to India to join the
lion-hearted Butlers, who were out there
alone through all the stormy days of the In-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

dian Mutiny, and were now looking eagerly
for promised reenf orcements :

"As we were to sail from Boston, it was
arranged that were to go to Lynn, the
seat of the New England Conference, where
we were to be ordained a few days before
the date of our sailing. We arrived at Lynn
on the 7th of April, and found the Confer-
ence in session. Bishop Ames presided, and
some of the notable men of the church were
present. Dr. W. F, Warren was one of the
young men ordained on Simday, and Gilbert
Haven, then a prominent but not yet a lead-
ing member of the Conference, spoke at one
of the anniversaries. An incident which oc-
curred at the Sunday school anniversary has
lingered in my memory. The church was
crowded, and I could only get room to stand
in the vestibule, n6ar the door. I was stand-
ing leaning against the stairway listening to
a thousand chUdren singing,

" * In heaven above, where all is love.
There'll be no more sorrow there.*

In those days when my heart was burdened
with a certain kind of quiet sadness, these
words came to me with a sweet, soothing in-

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

fluence which I shall never forget. A
stranger stood by me, and noticing that he
seemed to recognize me, I said : 'What sweet
singing!*

" 'You'd better enjoy it all you can,' he
replied, 'for you will never hear such singing
again.'

"The words dropped upon my heart like
lead. I was reminded that I was leaving
privileges which had become interwoven with
my daily happiness; but my imbelieving
heart did not then dare to hope that in other
tongues I should hear the songs of Zion
warbled by the glad young voices of thou-
sands rescued from the worship of idols.
Often since that day, when listening to glad
songs of praise in India, have I thought of
the singers at Lynn, and my strange slow-
ness to believe that their song was to be taken
up by all the little ones of earth.

"At eight o'clock on Tuesday morning,
April the 12th, we went on board the little
vessel which was to carry us to Calcutta. It
was a snug little ship of only six hundred and
fifty tons, carried a cargo of Wenham ice.
A dozen friends accompanied us, and a brief
service was held in the little cabin of the ship.

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

Instead of selecting a farewell hymn, we
joined in singing,

" * O for a thousand tongues to sing
My great Redeemer's praise.
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of his grace! '

after which Dr. Durbin commended us in
prayer to God, asking for protection at sea
and victory on our distant battlefield, A tug
took us in tow, but strong easterly winds
kept us from getting out to sea tiU the morn-
ing of the 16th, when our vessel crept out
of the harbor and began her long journey
across the trackless sea. Late in the after-
noon I went up on deck, and looking through
the mist and rain took what I supposed was
my last view of the shores of my native land.
The distant hills were fast hiding themselves
in mist and cloud, and the view was utterly
cheerless and desolate. I ran my eye along
the coast hne, looked at the hills, thought
of greener hills and brighter skies farther
west, and then turned away to look beyond
the everlasting hills for the golden gates of
the city of Ught."

Happy the young missionary who goes

FOREIGN MISSIONARY SERVICE

forth with such consecration to his task and
with such assurance of the divine call and
leadership. Happy the church that has such
sons to send. Above all, happy the land and
the people toward whom such Knights of the
Cross set their faces to find high and holy
adventure.

CHAPTER VI
CALLED TO FACE A LIFE TASK

While these notable reenforeements are
on their way it would be well to review briefly
the situation in India.

The Rev. Dr, and Mrs. William Butler
were there. They had selected a central
territory between the Ganges and the
Jumna, in the two populous and important
provinces of Oudh and Rohilkimd. And
while the Methodist missions have far tran-
scended these early bounds, the fact that they
are still the main center of the Methodist
strength and influence, and that Luck-
now, the capital of Oudh, is still the great-
est Methodist center of the Indian empire,
bears witness to the wisdom and sagacity of
the Butler selection of field.

Soon after the starting of the mission, the
Indian Mutiny broke out and threatened to
destroy the very foundations of all Chris-
tian work throughout India. But what
really happened was that the very horrors

CALLED TO FACE A LIFE TASK

of the Mutiny quickened Christian solicitude
and interest in India. The devoted loyalty
of the handful of Indian Christians to their
Lord added confidence and admiration to
solicitude. The Mutiny, so far from uproot-
ing Christianity from India, only stimulated
deeper interest and larger effort. As more
recently in the Boxer Rebellion in China,
"the ashes of the martyrs are the seed of the
church." Among the other results was the
sailing of the party of whom James M. Tho-
burn was one.

India has ever since been deep in the heart
of American Methodism. It has proved to
be at once our most picturesque, romantic,
and fruitful mission field, and never more so
than to-day, when tidal waves of salvation
are carrying tens of thousands of converts
into the Christian Church.

The India to which Thoburn went greeted
him with an impressive presentation of the
idolatry in which it was steeped. After four
months of monotonous sailing they "sighted
the hills of Orissa." "Going up on deck I
saw a large, black object on the shore and
was told that it was the world-renowned
temple of Juggernaut. It seemed as if

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

heathenism had risen up to meet us at our
coming and bid us defiance. My earliest
missionary recollections had been associated
with that temple and its hideous idol, and my
mind and heart were strangely moved as I
gazed upon the gloomy-looking black object
before me. I was at the doorway of India,
and began to feel eager for the strife which
I knew was near at hand."

How prolonged that strife and how en-
trenched the people in their devotion to their
idol gods, he was to learn through the long
toilsome years. He was also to learn that
deepest joy of deUvering men by the thou-
sands from the thraldom of fear that just
such debasing conceptions of Deity as the
Juggernauts of man's perverted imagmation
build.

The first years of the young missionary's
life, though filled with labor and days of
earnest devotion, do not call for special
notice. Stationed at Naini Tal, on the slopes
of the Himalayas, he preached in English
to the soldiers of the British garrison,
eagerly devoting himself, meanwhile, to the
acquisition of the Hindustani, in which he
early acquired much facility for ordinary

CALLED TO FACE A LIFE TASK

colloquial speech with the less educated. His
English preaching was markedly effective;
and the more so because he was forced to
conclude his services in an hour and his ser-
mons in thirty minutes. He says :

"The sermon was reduced to thirty min-
utes. I had been accustomed to make a
formal introduction and to attempt a formal
peroration. I cut off both of these at a
stroke, and found that in doing so I had
simply thrown away much useless wadding.
Then I eliminated everything which I did
not reaUy wish to say, and which did not
seem really important to be said, and found
that I could give the people God's message
a great deal more effectively in thirty min-
utes than in sixty. To my surprise, I found
that the whole service was made more effec-
tive by the rigid limitations of time, and I
have ever since maintained the rule which
was enforced upon me by the Scotch major.
If I wished to deliver an oration or a lec-
ture, or to argue a question like a lawyer,
I should ask for an hour's time at least ; but
when I come before people with a message
from God, I prefer to be more like a man
in haste. A messenger of the Almighty has

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

no business to saunter into a pulpit and waste
five minutes in the lolling in an easy chair
or sofa, no business to talk with the minister
who sits beside him while the choir wastes
precious time with operatic preludes and in-
terludes, no business to perform the ritual-
istic duty of reading tedious and irrelevant
lessons, to niake long and tedious prayers,
to waste five minutes in reading notices and
then to spend one half the time devoted to
the sermon in talk which might be omitted
without the slightest loss to any himian
being. God's messenger should be a man
in haste, and when standing before those to
whom God has sent him, he should be very
careful not to waste a single half-minute."

In the service of the English he was learn-
ing what afterward stood by him and the
cause of Christianity in India in good stead.

The direct returns of his labor among the
Indians were sKght. It was two years before
a single convert was baptized; and at the
end of his first term of service the band of
Christians was but small and feeble.

The missionary had married; a little son
had been born, but the dear young wife sick-
ened and died. The little nest was broken

CALLED TO FACE A LIFE TASK

up. The missionary began to have premoni-
tions of coming changes in his work.

"What was in the futm-e I did not know;
but unconsciously the feeling was slowly
creeping into my heart that my connection
with Naini Tal was not to be permanent.
He who mars our chosen plans can make
our plans for us, and I began to feel that
God's thoughts were above my fancies,
God's promises above and beyond my hopes,
and God's vineyard a wider sphere of labor
than the choice little corner which I had
thought to call my own."

Soon after the wife's death the mission-
ary, accompanied by a faithful Indian serv-
ant, took his infant boy home, to spend less
than eighteen months with him during the
next twenty years. What self-crucifixion
there is in such experiences many a sad-
hearted but uncomplaining missionary
parent knows!

During his home stay he was subtly
tempted to remain and organize a "school
for preparing missionaries." From this he
was saved by the quiet but penetrating in-
sight of his sister Isabella. He sought an
interview with her on the subject. He says:

THOBURX— CALLED OF GOD

"I unfolded the plan without a shadow of
misgiving, I was allowed to finish my story
without interruption, and when I had told
all we walked a few paces in silence. At last
I asked, *What do you think of it all? Why
don't you tell me V

" *If I remember correctly,* she replied,
*you said, when you went to India, you were
sxu-e God called you?'
'Yes; and so I was/
T)id he caU you?'

'Yes; I have never doubted it for a
moment; it was the clearest religious impres-
sion of any kind that I have ever received.'

" *Then my advice is this : whenever God
gives you an equally clear call to leave India
you may safely give it up. Have you any
such call now?' The effect of this question
was astonishing. In a moment the false
lights had vanished, and God's star was
again shining. I belonged to India again,
and saw only one path of duty before me.
The next morning it seemed as if the pro-
ject of abandoning India was a thing of the
distant past, and I could scarcely realize that
I had only the day before been contemplating
such a thing as retirement from the field."

CHAPTER VII

CALLED TO MOMENTOUS EX-
PERIENCES: EARLY BAPTISM
OF LOW-CASTE PEOPLE

On his return to India he was at first ap-
pointed to a remote hill station where it
seemed his range was sadly constricted. He
applied himself with his accustomed dili-
gence. At the end of two years there was
a Christian community of twenty-six. "Up
there in the moimtains, Thobum was not
finding big returns for his labors ; but he was
brooding over big ideas and was to receive
a very special fitting for the greatly enlarg-
ing plans."

It was high up in the moimtains of Gurh-
way, where the missionary's heart almost
failed him in the presence of the blindest and
most ardent bands of idolatrous pilgrims,
that God's Spirit specially visited him and
he was strengthened to "undertake great
things for God and to expect great things
from God."

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

"At eleven o'clock I took my pocket Bible
and retired to a little thicket near by for my
Sabbath worship. I was the only worshiper.
No other person within fifty miles adored the
God to whom I that day bowed down. I sat
on the soft grassy carpet, in the thick shade
of an evergreen oak, and opening my Bible
at random began to read the thirty-second
chapter of Isaiah:

" 'Behold a King shall reign in righteous-
ness, and princes shall rule in judgment.
And a man shall be as a hiding place from
the wind, and a covert from the tempest;
as rivers of waters in a dry place, as the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
And the eyes of them that see shall not be
dim, and the ears of them that hear shall
hearken. . . . Until the Spirit be poured
upon us from on high, and the wilderness
be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be
counted for a forest. . . . Blessed are ye
that sow beside all waters.'

"I had no definite expectation in my mind
as I began to read this chapter. I was strug-
gling against a feeling of extreme depres-
sion, and clinging to God's sure word of
promise, but beyond this I was asking for

MOMENTOUS EXPERIENCES

nothing and expecting nothing. I read on
until I came to the words, *Until the Spirit
be poured upon us from on high,' when it
seemed as if a window of heaven had been
opened above me. The Holy Spirit was
poured upon me, and in a moment my sink-
ing heart was filled with exultant hope and
confidence. I read on imtil I came to the
last verse, 'Blessed are ye that sow beside all
waters,' when I saw, and I felt in my inmost
soul, that in going forth to earth's waste
places to sow I was the heir of a special
promise and had the assurance of a special
blessing.

"The experience of that memorable hour
upon the lonely moimtainside had to me all
the force of a renewal of my commission
from above. I little imderstood at the time
what a permanent influence it was to have
upon my subsequent life. It has not lingered
like a bright spot in a receding past, but it
has followed me wherever I have gone.
Nearly eighteen years have passed since that
day, but the influence of that manifestation
of the Spirit to me is clearer and more
powerful now than it was the day after the
event. It lives in my heart like a vision of

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

God. It has all the power of a special reve-
lation, and it seems as natural for me to
plead its memory in prayer as to make men-
tion of any of the written promises of the
Word. God took me apart from the world,
withdrew me into solitude with himself, that
he might gird me anew with strength, and
teach me in my chosen school a lesson of
service never to be forgotten.

"On Friday evening we visited a village
near by and talked to the inquirers Kving in
it for some time. They had many excuses
and many promises to make, but declined to
take any decisive steps toward becoming
Christians. After a long talk I told them
I must leave, but before doing so asked them
to kneel down and join with us in prayer.
They all bowed down to the ground, while
I prayed earnestly but with a heavy heart,
for I fully expected them to leave and pass
on to another place. When we arose I be-
gan to bid them f areweU, but was suddenly
interrupted by the head man of the company,
who held out his hand and gave me his prom-
ise to accept baptism at once. Others fol-
lowed, and the result was that we returned to
the village the next evening, held a delight-

MOMENTOUS EXPERIENCES

fill meeting, and at its close baptized eight
men and three women. We were aU happy,
and yet I had serious misgivings about what
we had done. These three women knew
very Kttle about Christ or Christianity.
They differed from the other women aromid
them chiefly in the fact that they were
friendly to Christianity, while the others
hated it, but very few missionaries would
have pronounced them 'prepared for bap-
tism.' The men were better informed, and
some of them more in earnest, but I had
grave misgivings even in the case of the best
of them. I feared very much that I had
acted too precipitately, but there had seemed
no other way open to me. To have left the
people tiU they were better prepared would
have been to abandon them to the wiles of
intriguing neighbors, who would almost cer-
tainly have entangled them in various snares,
and thus made it nearly impossible to get
them safely within the Christian fold. I
hoped that it would turn out right, but
feared it might be otherwise. Little did I
dream, however, as I lay down to sleep that
night of the lessons which were in store for
me the next day.

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

"Notice had been circulated through all
the villages around that the grand meeting
on Sunday would be held at eleven o'clock,
and I had looked forward to this hour with
eager expectation. The day was bright and
clear, and a sweet Sabbath calm rested upon
the quiet grove where our httle camp was
pitched. Eleven o'clock came, but no audi-
ence appeared. This, however, did not much
surprise us, as the simple villagers in India
had no idea of time, and on such occasions
may come an hour earlier or two hours later
than the time appointed. We waited till the
afternoon, and then gathered together a lit-
tle company imder a tree, where I preached,
and afterward baptized two men, a woman,
and a child. A few more stragglers dropped
in, and at five o'clock I preached again and
baptized two women and two children.
Shortly after I had commenced preaching
a large company arrived and took their
places imder the tree, where they listened
very attentively. While I was baptizing the
candidates all had risen to their feet and were
watching the ceremony with the greatest in-
terest, but I had not given them any special

thought. At the close, to my utter astonish-
es

MOMENTOUS EXPERIENCES

ment, eleven men stepped forward, and
asked me to baptize them. They seemed
serious and resolute, but I shrank from the
idea of admitting so many uninstructed men
to the holy rite of baptism. I accordingly
told them that I was very glad to see them
take this step, but that it would be necessary
to give them preparatory instruction, and
that in due time I would come again and
baptize them. I saw their countenances fall
in a moment, but did not divine the cause.
Zahur-ul-Haqq, however, was master of the
situation. To make the time, he started a
hymn and then coming up to me, quietly
said: *If you put these men off in this way,
they will not beheve you. They will merely
think that you have some secret reason for
doubting them, and we shall see them no
more. We must take them just as they
come. Let them see that we trust them, and
they will then trust us. If we do not accept
them and baptize them, we cast them off
altogether/

"I was in a great strait, and for a minute
or two I did not know what to do. But it
would have been fatal for me to vacillate,
and whatever was to be done must be done

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

at once, and done firmly and confidently. I
Kfted my heart to God in prayer, and my
decision was made. The men were called
forward, and I told them that by the advice
of Zahur-ul-Haqq I had determined to bap-
tize them first and instruct them afterward.
They brightened up at once, and were bap-
tized in the midst of a rejoicing little com-
pany of Christians.

"I left Bashta with no little misgiving. I
had baptized twenty-seven adults and organ-
ized them into a church, appointed a pastor
over them, and arranged for a careful super-
vision of the work; but when I thought of
those raw converts my heart almost sank
within me. How could they be expected to
hold together, adopt Christian habits, and
develop the hfe of a genuine Christian
church? What would other missionariesL
think of this wholesale baptizing of ignorant
men whom I had never seen before, and
whose antecedents and even names I knew
little or nothing of whatever ? I was troubled
not a little with questionings of this kind as
I went on my way, but it was all for nothing.
God was in the work. The little church
founded in the wilderness and built out of

MOMENTOUS EXPERIENCES

such rough material was not to fall into
speedy decay. A year later I visited the
place and held a meeting which was greatly
blessed. Mr. Wheeler and Zahur-ul-Haqq
were with me, and the latter received a rich
anointing of the Spirit which added greatly
to his efficiency in the work. On Sunday I
baptized fifteen adults, and after receiving
the conununion, one himdred and two Chris-
tians sat down imder the mango trees to a
conunon meal. The church at Bashta now
holds a notable place among the Christians
of that region, and the survivors of that
group who were first baptized consider it
the chief honor of their lives that they be-
longed to the early pioneers of that day of
small things."

A full transcription is made of this event,
for it was one of those seemingly inconspicu-
ous matters out of which a great movement
was to grow, namely, the turning of masses
of the low-caste people of India to Chris-
tianity.

This matter of mass baptisms is not here
argued. In fact, the days of contention re-
garding it are practically past. All the mis-
sions are more or less engaged in the win-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

ning of these masses. And, with adequate
effort, there seems to be a general expecta-
tion that the entire out-caste and the lowest
caste population of India may speedily be
won to Christ in tens of millions.

This movement should, however, be ac-
companied with very strenuous effort for
primary education among the children, the
preparation of an indigenous ministry, and
a wisely directed and persistently maintained
movement toward self-support.

No church can be truly rooted in its native
soil that is not able to read God's Word for
itself, that is not increasingly led by its own
sons and daughters, and that is not progres-
sively freeing itself from financial depend-
ence upon kindly people of alien lands. Self-
instruction, self-support, self -propagation,
all leading to self-government, must be got-
ten before the fast-growing Indian churches
as its great "Quadri-Lateral."

Perhaps the earliest definite movement
among these "untouchables" in the mass was
that to which Missionary Thoburn was so
strangely and divinely led. What was a
notable and much-disputed experiment then
is happily a commonplace experience now.

CHAPTER VIII

CALLED TO HELP CREATE A
WOMAN'S MISSIONARY MOVE-

MENT

With the early beginnings of an infant
Indian church all manner of difficulties mul-
tiplied. Particularly was the young mission-
ary perplexed to know what to do with the
women. These were even more ignorant
than the men, more wedded to customs, and
wholly unused to the presence of any men
except those of their own immediate family.
How was he to nurture and train the wives
and mothers of the young and growing
church ?

Our missionary was very much in earnest
and there was in him both a quick compre-
hension, a ready sympathy and yet a holy
boldness that broke through unprofitable
conventions. He found, even among the
low-caste converts, that the women, if any
of the elder males of the family were pres-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

ent, would hide their faces and sit on the
floor of the church in a huddling heap.

He appealed, he expostulated in vain.
One day he felt that he could stand it no
more:

"One day I was to preach in the village
chapel, and before the service I exhorted the
women to come in and sit down unveiled,
and thus show, once for all, that they had
thrown their foohsh customs to the wind.
The husbands had given their consent, but
I was by no means assured that my exhorta-
tions would be heeded. The hour of service
arrived, and the men filed into the httle mud-
walled chapel, and according to custom, took
their seats on the floor on one side of the
room. The women's side of the chapel was
ominously vacant, and for a time I thought
they must have conspired to stay away. But
soon after the service had commenced a file
of good sisters entered the chapel. The class
leader's wife was at the head of the party,
and she led the way to a corner on my left,
where she busied herself for a minute or two
in shuffling from side to side, but finally sat
down with her face toward the corner, and
with both her head and face carefuUy cov-

A WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

ered. I left the little stand, which served
as a pulpit, went to the poor creature, laid
a hand on each shoulder, and requested her
to tiu-n round. She was startled half out of
her wits, but tiu-ned at once. The woman
next in rank to her had elder-brothers-in-
law present, but she bravely took her seat
and uncovered her face, and then all the rest
followed her example; and from that time
the spell of this stupid custom was broken
in that village and neighborhood. But
there were other customs and superstitions
which constantly hedged up our way in try-
ing to introduce a better life among the
women, and in our frequent efforts to effect
reforms by our summary and sometimes im-
wise methods we were often baffled and de-
feated. At times I was at my wits' end, and
felt almost ready to give up the struggle,
but I did not know that God was even then
beginning to show us a more excellent way."
The "more excellent way" was the thought
that came to him, that woman's work can
best be done by women. If he could get a
woman free to devote her whole time to these
raw, untaught women Christians and their
heathen neighbors, it would greatly help.

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

He saw this and invited the best woman he
knew in America to join him. She was his
sister Isabella.

Years before this the conviction was set-
tling upon the mind of Miss Thoburn that
she was to "go far hence unto the Gentiles.*'
But family matters had prevented. Besides,
there was no church organization imder
which Miss Thoburn could go. Neither she
nor her brother, however, was a person to
be halted by diflSculties. The brother's solu-
tion was that his sister should join "The
Woman's Missionary Society of New
York," a nondenominational Society. But
the sister more penetratingly saw that the
best work would be done in these early days
by remaining under the direction of her own
church. Nor was she kept waiting long, for
others besides James Thoburn had seen the
imperative necessity for a woman agency in
the Indian field. The Butlers and the
Parkers were home in 1869, and the elect
ladies who bore these names, joined by five
others, on a stormy day in May organized
"The Woman's Foreign Missionary So-
ciety" in Tremont Street Church, Boston,
Massachusetts.

A WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

Boston has witnessed the birth of many
great movements ; but it is doubtful whether
any farther reaching activity, fraught with
inexpressible blessing to large bodies of
needy people, was ever laimched in the great
capital of New England than this one.

The first missionaries of this new Society
were Isabella Thoburn and Clara Swain,
M.D., the latter the first woman missionary
doctor ever sent out by any board, and the
forerunner of a small army of workers, as
helpful and blessed as ever have taken the
messages of their Master to the suflFering
bodies and souls of the women of distant
lands.

The missionary, with his readiness to learn
new lessons, soon discovered that his sister
was as real a missionary as he. With charac-
teristic frankness he says:

"I was not quick, however, to learn that
the ladies sent out to the work were mission-
aries, and that their work was quite as im-
portant as my own. A few days after my
sister had commenced her work I found my-
self pressed for time, and asked her to copy
a few letters for me. She did so cheerfully,
and very soon I had occasion to repeat the

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

request. The copying was again done for
me, but this time I was quietly reminded that
a copyist would be a great assistance to her
as to myself. The remark made me think,
and I discovered that I had been putting a
comparatively low estimate on all the work
which *the missionaries' were not doing.
Woman's work was at a discount, and I hacj
to reconsider the situation, and once for all
accept the fact that a Christian woman sent
into the field was a Christian missionary, and
that her time was as precious, her work as
important, and her rights as sacred as those
of the more conventional missionaries of the
other sex. The old-time notion that a woman
in her best estate is only a helper, and should
only be recognized as an assistant, is based
on a very shallow fallacy. She is a helper
in the married relation, but in God's wide
vineyard there are many departments of
labor in which she can successfully maintain
the position of an independent worker.

"It has, been said that a separate Mission-
ary Society need not have been organized,
but that its work could even now be as well
done by the parent society. It is easy after
an event to say that things might have been

A WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

done diflFerently, but there is not the slight-
est reason to believe that any six leading men
in the church would have been able to in-
terpret the rising conviction of their Chris-
tian sisters, if the matter had been left to the
men alone. As a matter of fact, bishops,
secretaries, managers, editors, and leading
men generally, had not only failed to com-
prehend the first indications of this convic-
tion, but were perplexed, and, in many in-
stances at least, confoimded by the sudden
uprising of the daughters of the church. It
might do to say that these men should have
had clearer vision, or that they should have
been more quick to recognize the presence
of a great moral movement around them;
but to say that the direction of the movement
itself should have been intrusted to men who
did not appreciate its superlative worth, and
some of whom did not hesitate to disparage
it, is simply to say that the good work should
have been suppressed at the outset.

"It was a mistake on the part of the
Woman's Society to lay too much stress on
the necessity of employing unmarried women
in the mission field. The eflFect was to create
the impression that married women could do

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

very little work as missionaries, and this very
naturally had the effect of causing some
women in the field to look askance at a so-
ciety which seemed to depreciate the good
work which many had been doing."

This sentiment finds wide confirmation
among experienced missionaries. Thoburn
foimd this new agency of the highest value
and ventures this remark: "If the Woman's
Missionary Society had done nothing else,
or if its work in other lands were to perish
from the earth, it would still be able to
justify its existence by pointing to the strik-
ing advance which has been made in all that
concerns woman's work in the North India
Mission since the first agents of the society
arrived in the field at the beginning of 1870.
It is not so much that these ladies have done
a good and great work, as that scores of
Christian women have been enlisted in the
Master's service, and the working capacity
of the mission, as a whole, very nearly, if not
altogether, doubled."

"In recent years I have noticed that there
is not only a steady breaking down of the
old prejudice of making women too promi-
nent in the churches, but an increased will-

A WOMAN'S MOVEMENT

ingness to intrust them more and more with
responsibilities which, a very few years ago,
were given to men alone. Two young ladies
have been sent by the Baptists of Australia
to open a mission in a remote town in Bengal
where no gentlemen are at hand to direct
them, and in our own mission women have
repeatedly been put in charge of stations
where the entire responsibility devolved upon
them, and they have acquitted themselves
well. It is more than probable that this
tendency to give the women more and more
of the ordinary work found in a mission field
will increase rather than diminish, and I can
even go the length of adding that it is by no
means improbable that Indian Phoebes will
yet administer the ordinances of the church
to the secluded women of the zenanas. I
have baptized frightened village women
under circumstances that made me wish that
some Phoebe might be employed to take my
place ; and as for the inmates of the zenanas
it is simply impossible for a man to gain
access to them, and, even if he could be ad-
mitted to them, his services would be very
imsastisfactory. A woman who has been
carefully secluded all her days, and who has

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

never seen the faces of men who were not
members of her family, is not merely em-
barrassed in the presence of a foreign mis-
sionary; she is absolutely frightened. There
are those who beheve that these timid, un-
taught creatures will be induced to come to
the big church built for them, and stand up
in the presence of a congregation, face to
face with a missionary, and give intelligible
answers to his questions, and then receive the
baptism at his hands. All this may happen,
but I do not expect to see it. I cannot be-
lieve that God will exact such an ordeal from
such women; but rather, that, as in ancient
times, we shall see the church in the house
revived, and Christian women sent to minis-
ter to those who are inaccessible to the ordi-
nary minister of the congregation. God
would have mercy, and not sacrifice, and he
will not compel these children of misfortune
to suflFer the torture of publicity for the mere
sake of conforming to a custom which is more
conventional than apostolic."

This may possibly shock the ecclesiastical
beliefs of some reader ; but there is inherent
good sense in the contention.

CHAPTER IX
CALLED ACROSS THE GANGES

James Thoburn, in 1870, was the presid-
ing elder of the Oudh District, with his resi-
dence in the capital, Lucknow, one of the
greater cities of India.

Across the river Ganges, outside of Oudh,
was the growing city of Cawnpore. An in-
vitation to preach in Cawnpore brings us to
the next marked forward movement to be led
by Thobiu'n. Writing of it, he says :

"It so chanced one week that I had no ap-
pointment of any kind for the Sabbath, and
the novel situation led me to consider care-
fully whether I was doing my whole duty.
On Friday I had an errand at the railway
station, and, while walking across the plat-
form, a gentleman with a telegram in his
hand stopped me and asked me if I would
go to Cawnpore on Simday, and preach to a
small congregation. A preacher had disap-
pointed him, and he had just been notified
that he must look up some one else. I told

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

him that for once in my life I had an idle day
ahead, and so agreed to go to Cawnpore,
^assuredly gathering' that God was calling
me thither. Cawnpore was at that time an
important city, and I had been regretting
that it had not been included in our field and
wondering if our way would open for us to
gain an entrance into it. It is much larger
now, and is not only the chief commercial
city of North India, but destined to maintain
its leading position in the future.

"I found a congregation of about fifty
people worshiping in a hired storeroom and
served two Sundays in the month by Presby-
terian and Baptist missionaries from Alla-
habad. I was received most cordially, and
was not only invited to return, but urged to
plant a mission in the place ; or, if not able to
do this, at least to arrange for preachers to
go over from Lucknow on the vacant Sun-
days. I was anxious to drive in oiu* stakes
at once, but several obstacles intervened. In
the first place, the Board in New York had
accepted at the outset a certain carefully de-
fined field for our mission, the western
boundary of which was the river Ganges,
and had never formaUy relinquished the

CALLED ACROSS THE GANGES

right of fixing our boundaries. Then the
General Conference had fixed the boun-
daries of our Annual Conference, and it was
a question with some whether this did not
confirm the original action of the Board.
Still, further, there was an unwritten law of
comity among the various missionary bodies
in India, which made it improper to intrude
into the field of a neighbor without his per-
mission, and, as matters then stood, it was
proper and fitting that we should seek coun-
sel of some of our neighbors, especially of our
American Presbyterian brethren, who occu-
pied the region west of the Ganges, while we
occupied the country eastward. Lastly, we
had a well-imderstood agreement among our-
selves that no new mission station should be
added to our list, except by the consent of the
Annual Conference, and this consent I could
not obtain till the close of the year. While
thus hedged about in so many directions I
could not take any decisive action, and yet it
seemed very clear to me that an open door
like this ought not to be neglected. I, ac-
cordingly, ventured to become responsible
for supplying the little congregations with
preachers, who would be sent over from

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

Lucknow every alternate Sunday, and left
the question of a permanent mission in the
city to be settled in the future. On my re-
turn to Lucknow I invited our Wesleyan
missionary brother to take a part in these
services, which he did for a time, but subse-
quently both he and the Baptist brethren
withdrew in our favor. In this way we were
led to begin work on the western bank of
the Ganges, and events soon proved that
God's hand had guided us thither."

This was the first step in a long journey,
and it was taken in the way that was after-
ward to plant the Methodist Mission all over
India. The immediate object was to serve
the needs of a handful of Enghsh people.
From the first, Thoburn had seen the tre-
mendous influence exercised by this small
community, and had always eagerly sought
to serve it. Less than a month ago he was
asked: "What is the use of work among the
English in India? Has it any real value?"
His answer was: "The English work as I
have known it in India I consider very valu-
able, in fact, a necessity. The whole intel-
lectual hfe of India is slowly drifting, like
ice from the arctic circle, toward the modern

CALLED ACROSS THE GANGES

English point of view. The very native pas-
tors themselves show the influence of the
EngHsh, of the EngUsh ideas, and in the
schools the discussions among our young
people, of which we have many instances, all
show that the reading public of India is in
touch with everything that bears the English
brand. The English people in India are
more directly connected with the phases of
thought noticeable among all native people
of the land. English Christians in India
have a wider and better influence upon the
public thought than is generally supposed,
and therefore, the right religious shaping of
their life is a great factor in influencing the
surrounding Hindus/'

CHAPTER X

LED TO SUMMON WILLIAM

TAYLOR

In the further spread of Methodist Mis-
sions in India, there now appears on the
scene a remarkable figure.

Romantic is the tale of how James Tho-
burn, the pathfinder and builder, summoned
to India's help Wilham Taylor, the greatest
evangelist of his day — indeed, take him all
in all, perhaps the outstanding evangelist of
modern times.

Taylor was widely known under the name
of "California Taylor," from his courageous
and successful work among the saloons and
gambling dens of San Francisco when the
whole region was plunged into the wild life
of an early gold-seekers' camp.

This tall, commanding figure, with a long

beard and an apostolic air, had burst upon

the California crowds and, by his ready wit,

his sweet songs, and powerful exhortations,

had arrested their attention and brought

SUMMONS TO WILLIAM TAYLOR

many to a godly life, for it was clear from
the first, and grew clearer all the way,
through this glorious man's ministry, that
his word was "in demonstration of the Spirit
and of power."

Perhaps a larger proportion of those con-
verted under Taylor's preaching became
Christians of the kind that "endure hard-
ness" than under any sinular ministry.
There was a commanding influence in the
man's own simplicity of life, his democratic
spirit, his unassuming ways, his rugged cour-
age, his patient endurance of positive priva-
tion. The contagion of this great, lofty soul
brought scores of lesser souls to altitudes un-
dreamed of.

The writer would crave the reader's par-
don if even in this brief sketch, he tirnis
aside from Thoburn to offer a tribute of
grateful praise to this holy and effective
man. He brought salvation to us and our
households, and the fragrance of his memory,
after forty years, is as ointment poured
forth. Wherever they may be scattered, in
America or amid the seven seas (for his
evangelism was widespread), there are still
himdreds who arise to call him blessed. And

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

thousands have gathered about him in that
fair land and before that Radiant Presence,
whose love he carried with him the roimd
world over. This was the man whose pres-
ence in India Thoburn coveted. Where the
world-wanderer might be, he did not know.
But he knew that probably in some remote
section of the far-flung British empire he
would likely be engaged spreading his Re-
deemer's kingdom.

Mr. Thoburn wrote Mr. Taylor an ear-
nest invitation to come to north India and
offered him every facility in conveying his
messages to the thronging people of the land.
The letter was addressed to the "Wesley an
Headquarters in London."

It was nearly a year before Taylor re-
ceived it. To him it was of the Lord, for he,
too, was a man who believed in the direct
leading of the Holy Spirit. Is there ever a
man really effective in the spiritual realm
who does not thus believe?

He came. Thoburn writes :

"He came up from Australia, and stopped
for a time in Ceylon, intending to go from
thence to the Wesleyan missionaries in the
Madras Presidency ; but, not finding an open

SUMMONS TO WILLIAM TAYLOR

door there at that time, he concluded to come
on to us at Lucknow, We waited his com-
ing with eager expectation, and spread his
fame among the people far and wide. He
arrived on Friday, November 25, 1870, and
began his work on the following Simday.
He had wonderfully changed since I had
seen him, both in manner and appearance.
He was now a veritable patriarch, with erect
and imposing mien, long, white beard, a
piercing but kindly eye, and a reserve which
often impressed strangers more powerfully
than any words could have done. His pul-
pit style had completely changed — so much
so, indeed, that there was absolutely nothing
about him which reminded me of the William
Taylor whom I had known a dozen years be-
fore. He seemed indifferent to the sur-
rounding circumstances, but from the mo-
ment of his arrival began to give us lessons
in his theory of *soul-saving.' At family
prayer he read a few verses and expounded
them to us, and then, kneeling down, con-
tinued the exposition in the form of prayer.
He insisted much on our maintaining an at-
titude of faith. Walking with him at a late
hour one night through a palace garden, I

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

chanced to say, 'If we should have a revival
here' — in a moment my arm was in the grip
of a giant.'

" If? My brother, there is no "if" about
it. We are going to have a revival. That is
settled. The agreement is with the Lord
Ahnighty, and it cannot fail.'

"As he thus talked to me he held me at
arm's length, while my arm felt as if screwed
up in an iron vise.

"On Simday evening the chapel was
crowded to its utmost capacity, and the en-
trance of the strange preacher was awaited
with great curiosity. He went inside the
communion railing, but paid no attention to
the humble little pulpit. After singing and
prayer he took the big Bible and stepping
to one side to be near the lamp, proceeded
to read and expoimd the second chapter of
Acts. He did this in a manner of seeming
indifference, and apparently took no note of
time. After singing a second hymn he an-
nounced his text, and began to preach to a
congregation which was expecting the bene-
diction.

"I have heard him preach, perhaps fifty
times since, but have seldom ever heard him

SUMMONS TO WILLIAM TAYLOR

make an eflfort which seemed less suited to
the occasion than his first sermon in India.
Altogether, the service was a disappointment
to us, and we were not surprised to see but
a small congregation the next evening. This,
however, seemed to arouse rather than de-
press the preacher, and the sermon was
searching and incisive. On Tuesday evening
sinners were invited forward for prayers,
and seven persons responded. They were
not deeply convicted, and only one of the
seven remained permanently with us; but
this meeting was an era in the history of our
work in India.''

And now began a ministry, often severely
criticized, always startling, always overturn-
ing traditions — sometimes perhaps need-
lessly and not to profit, but take it all in all,
a ministry of four years which has left in-
delible impress and greatly quickened the
Christian movement of the land.

So just, so discriminating, so comprehen-
sive is Bishop Thoburn's own writing on the
subject, it is quoted in full:

"Mr. Taylor had been preaching in Luck-
now for a few days. On Wednesday morn-
ing the first invitation was given to natives,

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

The congregation was composed almost ex-
clusively of native Christians, but very few
of them were really converted. I acted as
interpreter, and near the close of the sermon
I had an opportunity of perceiving the ef-
fects of that extraordinary power which at
times attends Dr. Taylor's preaching. He
was describing, in simple language, the
works of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit,
when suddenly a thrill seemed to go forth
with his words. I felt it as I tried to inter-
pret, and I saw the tears start into the eyes
of the natives before us. Eleven men came
forward for prayers, ten of whom ahnost
immediately professed to find peace in be-
lieving. Most of them were deeply moved,
and there was every reason to believe that the
work in their hearts was of the most genuine
character. We were all surprised, however,
at the simplicity and quietness of the meet-
ings. We had fully expected that a long and
vigorous prayer meeting would follow each
call for seekers, but this seldom occurred.
The inquirers were instructed, sometimes in
a body, and sometimes one by one, and their
attention kept closely to two points : submit-
ting to God and receiving Jesus Christ. I

SUMMONS TO WILLIAM TAYLOR

had seen Dr. Taylor in the midst of stormy
prayer meetings in former years, and asked
him why he had changed his methods. *I
never Uked those meetings,' he said, *but I
f oimd it best to endure them. When allowed
my own way, I choose my own course.' "

A deep and powerful work of revival set
in at Lucknow, but it was confined to the
Europeans and native Christians. Perhaps
the work of preparation for the understand-
ing of the gospel was not yet sufficiently ad-
vanced among others.

"We went through our mission field,
preached everywhere to the native Chris-
tians, stirred up a deep interest, and did
much good, but at the end of his visit, we
found ourselves just where we had been be-
fore ; face to face with millions of people who
seemed absolutely impervious to the truth,
and who thus far had never been moved by
the gospel, except in detached groups and
in obscure places.

"The work among the native Christians
was not deep except at two or three
points. . . .

"Had Dr. Taylor's mission terminated
here and he had left India to return no more,

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

he would still have done a great and impor-
tant work. He had taught valuable lessons,
had elevated the spiritual tone of our little
Conference, and had kindled a flame which
has never since gone out. It is due to him
to say that he gave an impetus to our work
which it has never lost, and that he committed
us to advanced movements which had he not
led the way we might have shnmk from for
years. If we were disappointed in not see-
ing him hew a way for us through the dense
masses of the natives, we were nevertheless
permitted to see him beckon us forward into
other fields, and point out to us other and
greater responsibihties than we had dared to
anticipate.

"That he did a great and important serv-
ice to the cause of Christianity in the empire
I do not for one moment doubt. He is the
'poor wise man' who by his wisdom did a
great good for the 'little city' of Indian mis-
sions, and now no man remembers him for
it. He was the pioneer revivalist of the em-
pire, and he gave an impetus to lay preach-
ing which is felt in all its force to the pres-
ent day. He brought the power of the gos-
pel to bear upon low depths of vice, and he

SUMMONS TO WILLIAM TAYLOR

inspired the most active Christians of the
land with a loftier courage than they had
known before.

"The doctrines which he preached, and
most of the peculiarities which he introduced,
are now popularized all over India, and
many of those who still condemn his pro-
cedure are entering heartily into the work
which he made possible for them. He did
not sufficiently appreciate the enormous dif-
ficulties which beset the work among the
natives, he was too sanguine in reference to
the success of his own men and his own
methods, and too quick to assume that he
had discovered the path which would quickly
lead us all out of the dense jungle of diffi-
culties in which we had so long been strug-
gling, but after discounting his services with
all just freedom, the fact remains that one
of the greatest benefactors Indian Chris-
tianity has ever had, and one of the truest
men who ever tried to plan and labor for the
Indian people, is William Taylor,"

CHAPTER XI

PREPARED AND CALLED TO

CALCUTTA

Me. Tayloe went from city to city in
India, and how during these visitations small
groups of believers were gathered into the
"class meetings" and then into the churches;
how from these churches have ultimately
come whole Conferences of Methodism and
the quickened life of the surrounding mis-
sionaries, cannot be told.

It was at Calcutta, the capital of the In-
dian empire, Taylor met with the greatest
opposition and indifference. Yet, in spite
of all, he dug foundations deep and wide.
And then, deeply moved from above, Taylor,
the courageous innovator, boldly summoned
Thoburn to leave his official position and his
Conference to continue in the metropolitan
city the work well begun, but much in need
of furthering.

But, as ever with those who seek the lead-
ing of God's Spirit, Thoburn was to learn
some valuable lessons the better to prepare

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

him for larger spheres than he had yet found.
He learned lessons of faith in the power of
Christ's gospel to save his hearers, even while
he was preaching ; and of faith in the people
whom he served to minister to his temporal
necessities and so release him and much of
his work from necessary dependence upon
a Mission Board; but, above all, he learned
to organize bands of scattered believers into
churches, self-supporting and largely self-
directing, while yet in happy aflSliation with
the denomination to which he belonged. God
was preparing his man for nation-wide work
and even for the regions beyond.

As in every other notable step taken by
Dr. Thoburn, his entry upon the work in
Calcutta was governed partly by his inward
impressions and partly by his Conference
and the trend of outer events. In the fall
of 1873 an elect lady present at the yearly
gathering in Lucknow, urged his coming to
Calcutta. He was much impressed. These
are his words :

"Mrs. May, of Calcutta, almost immedi-
ately began to urge me to go to Calcutta
and make that great city my future home.
She assured me that it had come upon her al-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

most as if by an inspiration that God had
work for me there, but her repeated and
earnest assurances that I would find an open
door and an eager people awaiting me there
seemed so improbable that I had often to
laugh at what seemed her misplaced en-
thusiasm. 'There will not be a place in the
city that will hold the congregation/ she
would say, 'and you will find more than you
can possibly do.' It was easy enough to be-
lieve that abundant work might be found in
Calcutta, but eager hearers and crowded con-
gregations seemed only to be possibihties of
a very distant future.

"Two months after the subject had been
pressed upon my attention I received a tele-
gram from Bishop W. L. Harris, then in
Ceylon, asking me to meet him in Calcutta,
where he was to arrive about the middle of
December. Father Taylor had commenced
his work in that city nearly a year previously,
and had worked bravely in the face of con-
stant discouragements. He called the city
'the Paris of the East,' and was accustomed
to say in those days that of all the places he
had ever visited, Calcutta was the hardest
and least inviting as a field of evangelistic

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

labor. He had not, however, worked in vain.
A church had been organized, a temporary
place of worship erected on a rented site, and
a deeper impression had been made upon the
city than, perhaps, he himself suspected, or
others were prepared to admit. He now
wished to leave the work in other hands. He
was an evangelist, and distinctly avowed his
conviction that it was no part of his mission
to do the work of a pastor, but, rather, to dig
and plant, and leave others to prune and
water.

"Bishop Harris spent some days in the
city and talked very freely to me about the
work, but did not broach the subject of my
transfer for some time. At last, however,
he intimated to me that he should be glad to
transfer me to Calcutta if the way would
open, and meanwhile Father Taylor had
intimated that he was impressed that I
should take the work out of his hands; and
he added that a singular dream had made it
seem probable to him that all the difficulties
which had baflBed him so long would crumble
to the earth as if in a moment when I came,
and that I would have an easy and joyous
victory. Our Conference met in January,

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

in Lucknow, and on taking counsel of the
brethren I found that, without a single ex-
ception, they all approved of my going. It
was, accordingly, arranged that I should
spend three of the hot months at Naini Tal,
but meantime go at once to Calcutta. I was,
accordingly, transfered to the 'Bombay and
Bengal Mission,' which was at that time
formally organized by Bishop Harris, and
my appointment read out for Calcutta."

Simmioned by Taylor, appointed by
Bishop Harris, Thoburn went to India's
capital city.

The work in Calcutta reads like a spirit-
ual romance, as, indeed, it was. Where
Spirit-filled men go, spiritual romances al-
ways spring up as in the legend the lilies
sprang up wherever Jesus trod. He found
in the city a small group of beheving men
and women already organized into a church.
A small church was being built.

"The new chapel was intended to seat a
congregation of four hundred persons, and
we were all very glad and thankful when on
the evening of its dedication it was filled in
every part. The next Simday evening it
was crowded, and we had to bring in chairs

100

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

from neighboring houses. On the third Sun-
day evening I went early so as to attend a
meeting for Bengalis which had been ap-
pointed for half-past four. While at this
meeting I saw some Europeans come in, and
supposing they had made a mistake, I went
to them and explained that the English serv-
ice would not begin for another hour.

" 'We knew the time,' was the reply, 'but
we have come early so as to be sure of getting
a seax.

"For the first time it dawned upon my dull
mind that our crowded congregation was to
be permanent, and I remembered with a feel-
ing of astonishment the prophecy of the good
lady who had first invited me to come to
Calcutta. It went on thus, night after night,
until six hundred hearers were packed into a
room which comfortably held only four him-
dred, and in the most sweltering weather
many of these people would sit patiently for
an hour or more, waiting for the service to be-
gin. When it did not rain, seventy-five seats
were placed outside the rear windows, and in
addition to these the doors and windows were
always thronged with people standing. This
crowded attendance would have been unsat-

101

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

isf actory enough if there had been no work
of salvation attending it, but this was not
wanting. At the dedicatory service two rose
to ask for the prayers of the congregation,
and this was the beginning of a work which
went steadily forward with increasing power
until, before the close of that year, three hun-
dred persons had been converted to God.
Many of these were members of other
churches, and did not connect themselves
with us ; but many others were drawn in from
the outside world, and took their places
permanently with us. The genuineness of
the work was attested by the remarkable hold
which it gained upon the more abandoned
and godless classes. An inmate of a house
of refuge was taken to one of the meetings
by a Christian lady, and on her way home
was asked how she hked it.

" *It's the strangest church I ever saw,'
was her reply. *It seemed to me that all the
bad people in Calcutta were there.'

"It was the New Testament ministry of
Christ repeating itself again in our day. The
Friend of sinners was there, and the very
classes who are supposed to have no religious
interest of any kind flocked aroimd him, as

102

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

in olden time. A year later I found, by
actual count, that twenty-five per cent of all
the members thus gathered in had, before
their conversion, been intemperate persons.

"Throughout this year we had conver-
sions, not only on every Simday evening, but
at ahnost every meeting which we held,
and the work of revival, which was then com-
menced, has never wholly ceased. Every
Sunday service during the past ten years has
been conducted as a revival service; and if
it so happens that two or three Simdays pass
in succession without anyone being con-
verted, the fact occasions surprise, and is ac-
cepted as a cause for heart-searching and
humiliation. The work of conversion was
very simple, but it was also very genuine.
Throughout this year I met with many in-
stances of persons finding peace with God
while listening to the preaching. One Sim-
day evening I went into the pulpit while suf-
fering from fever and preached with no little
difiiculty. I hardly knew what I was saying,
and at the close was about to dismiss the
congregation without a prayer meeting,
when it occurred to me that it might be well
to pursue the usual course, if for nothing

103

THOBURX— CALLED OF GOD

else but that the people might know that we
always wished to see them turn to God. I,
accordingly, called on awakened sinners to
come forward for prayers, and, to my ex-
treme surprise, sixteen persons promptly
rose and walked forward. I talked with
these persons one by one, and found that
seven of them had found peace in beUeving
while listening to my blundering attempt to
preach. I was astonished beyond measure,
and humbled in the dust, as I perceived how
very Uttle the success of my work depended
upon the quality of my sermons.''

So great was the pressure for added room,
that it soon became necessary to erect a
larger building. Architects and builders
were interviewed.

"My instructions were very brief. *I care
very little for the outside of the building,' I
said, *but insist on a good audience room. I
am like the Irishman, who told how a cannon
was made by taking a big hole and pouring
melted brass aroimd it. I give you a big
hole, one himdred feet long, sixty wide, and
thirty high, and wish you to show how it can
be covered with bricks and mortar.' My
friend accepted the commission, and in two

104

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

days not only gave me a good plan, but his
firm offered to have the bmlding ready for
me on my return from America, at the close
of the year, and nobly did they fulfill their
promise."

The building was paid for by the sacrific-
ing efforts of this congregation of poor peo-
ple, who were supporting their pastors and
also projecting all manner of programs of
what would now be called "social service"
among the sailors who crowded the port, the
soldiers from the garrison and among the
flotsam and jetsam that aboimd in all the
coast cities of Asia; where, alas! the moral
wreckage of Christian Europe and America
meets the product of the unspeakable vices
of paganism.

Dr. Thoburn's ministry in Calcutta was
not only rich in immediate results, it awak-
ened expectations among timid European
Christian circles, and emboldened them to
believe in the dynamic power of the gospel
—first to redeem their own fallen fellow reU-
gionists ; and, besides, so many educated In-
dians were converted as to prove the value of
work among the English, and in the English
tongue to effectively reach numbers of Eng-

105

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

lish-speaking Indians. But, above ally the
metropolitan character of his work in Cal-
cutta gave Dr. Thoburn both prestige and
personal fitting for those wider movements
which he was "called" to undertake.

In closing this brief account of the really
notable work done in Calcutta, something of
its method and quality may be learned from
the following excerpt :

"While preaching a sudden impulse moved
me to say: 'There is a person somewhere in
this audience who has come in here with a
broken heart. I know not who it is, but I
have a message for that person. I am speak-
ing for Him who came into our world to bind
up the broken-hearted. He is here now, and
he is here to help you. He gives me a special
message for you, and has come to save you,
to take all the bitterness out of your heart
and out of your life, and make your life
sweet and bright and full of hope and joy/
These remarks were thrown in parenthesis,
I hardly know why, and then I went on with
the sermon as I had planned it. At the close
I asked all those whose hearts God had
touched and who wished us to pray for them
to rise, and I fully expected to see among

106

CALLED TO CALCUTTA

those who responded a poor broken-hearted
woman, but not a woman moved. A dozen
or more men promptly rose to theh" feet,
but no woman stirred. I was greatly sur-
prised and perplexed, and for some time I
waited and urged any timid souls who might
be present to be courageous and ask for the
help they needed, but still no woman re-
sponded. At length I proceeded with the
prayer meeting, and while some one led I
turned to a man who had occupied a seat
within two paces of me, and in that conspicu-
ous place had risen in response to my invita-
tion. As I knelt beside him he said: 'I am
afraid you can do nothing for me. Mine is
a very difficult case. I am the person you
spoke of who has come in here with a broken
heart. I am a stranger here. I was coming
up the street, and was surprised to see the
theater open on Sunday night, and some one
told me there was to be preaching to-night.
I turned in, and every seat was full, and the
ushers brought me up here. I was startled
when you said that some one had come in
with a broken heart. I knew I was the man,
but I fear that I am beyond hope. The story
of my life is a story of utter misery/

107

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

"I saw this poor man the next day, and
hoped that he had been helped and healed;
but he left the city and I saw him no more.
This was the kind of work God gave me to
do in those hallowed days. Those were days
of power, days of hope, days of assured vic-
tory. Jesus Christ is forever the same.
Would to God that the Christians of this
world could awake to a sense of the im-
mediate personal presence of Jesus Christ
in their midst, as the Very same Jesus' who
walked in Galilee and taught in Judaea, who
hallowed the synagogue and glorified the
temple by his personal presence. It is a sad
truth that the modern church is too good, or
at least too respectable, to attract the world's
outcasts, or even the broken-hearted who
represent respectable society. A really ear-
nest soul in some way makes any average
group of people uncomfortable by his pres-
ence. He finds the door open, but the at-
mosphere within is apt to be chill and cheer-
less. The presence of the Uving Christ
means life, peace, hope, joy and immortality.
How slow we poor mortals are to enter into
the rich possessions which we inherit in our
Elder Brother's name !"

108

CHAPTER XII
CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

The Methodists often tell each other that
they are too widespread in their missionary
undertakings. Solemnly they resolve in
their chief comicils that they must concen-
trate more on narrower areas; but steadily,
in one way or another, they seem forced to
"enlarge their borders/' It would seem to
be in their blood. And, however one may
agree in the general advice not to imdertake
what cannot be well done, it is a more difficult
matter to refuse to believe, when all the facts
are before one, that many of these adven-
tures of extension are not manifestly born of
the acknowledged leadership of the Holy
Spirit.

In considering this matter there cannot
but be noted a sharp distinction between
new missions projected by those on the field
and by those whose only connection with
such new openings is to see them made,
with scant knowledge of existing conditions

109

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

and with very partial provision for their
financing for a brief term, then going off and
leaving them to cheerfully enter upon other
duties. The bnmt of all succeeding diffi-
culties falls upon the men, usually them-
selves inexperienced, who have been called
into the work and upon a protesting Mission
Board already staggering under the weight
of existing obhgations.

There is surely grave question to be raised
regarding such careless and largely self-
pleasing adventures.

But when the extension is imder the com-
pulsion of recognized and deeply felt need,
and when he who is pressed upon from
aroimd and above will himself largely bear
the new burdens created, one is apt to judge
more patiently and come to more favorable
conclusion. The opening of a new area of
missionary effort may be from thoughtless-
ness for those who must later bear the load,
and from even imconsciously lesser motives
of self-advertisement. On the other hand,
to refuse to go forward when God beckons
to personal endurance for others, may be to
sin against Him.

Whatever may have been said in the past

110

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

regarding Bishop Thoburn's ceaseless quest
for new missionary adventures, it can never
be said that he began anything whose early
burdens he did not largely bear. Nor has
time failed to attest the soundness of his
judgment as well as the daring of his spirit.
He has always seen in continents — ^but his
continents have. always proved sure footing
for his own and succeeding footsteps. The
writer does not know a single instance in
which Bishop Thoburn's foresight has been
at fault nor his forecasts failed to be con-
firmed by the outcomes, whether in the pur-
chase of vast properties without a cent in
hand to pay far them, or the thrusting forth
of new enterprises into vast territories in the
regions beyond.

Wherever matters have been well handled
by the immediate successors, the result has
shown that the man's felt dependence upon
the inner suggestions of the Holy Spirit,
and perhaps a native gift of insight, has car-
ried him to a degree of successful initiative
rarely given to men. Among these great
adventures of his later years are three that
carried him far beyond the boimds of India

proper and made him Grod's man for com-

111

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

pleting the links whereby Methodism with
its virility and spontaneity of life girdles the
globe. The earhest of these was his mission-
ary trip to Rangoon, Burmah. This penin-
sula lies to the east of India proper, across
the Bay of Bengal. It is the seat of a dis-
tinct type of Buddhism, the religion pro-
fessed for the most part by practically
all the Burmese who inhabit the lowlands.
These lowlands, drained by the great Irawadi
River and its tributaries, are among the rich-
est alluvial plains of Asia. The great har-
vests of rice, which are reaped as often as
thrice a year, feed not only the ten millions
of Burmah, but are largely exported to the
less favored lands of the East. In these
later years, since Burmah has become en-
tirely a British province, large numbers of
Hindus from India, together with a con-
siderable sprinkling of Chinese from South
China, are to be f oimd in Rangoon, the capi-
tal, and are pushing farther and farther up
the river into the interior. In the hills
farther from the coast are to be found many
pre-Burman tribes, among whom are the
Karens and Shans. The former of these
have been largely evangelized by the Amer-

112

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

ican Baptists. As is usual in all British pos-
sessions in the Far East, there are sprinkled
among these Asiatic miUions a considerable
number of English and part-English folk
holding the form of Christianity, but for the
most part strangers to its reality and power.
This class has always appealed greatly to
Dr. Thoburn, and since WilUam Taylor's
arrival in India he had caught even more
clearly the vision of possibiUties that lay in
this Anglo-Indian commimity for the evan-
gelization of the Asiatic milUons that were
around them. In response to many invita-
tions Dr. Thoburn finally consented to visit
Rangoon. The man's quiet courage and his
complete confidence in the outcomes are most
naively shown in his own statement which
follows. Nor should the writer fail to call
the attention of the reader to its compendious
brevity and force. Dr. Thoburn is one of
those rarest mortals who has done great
things and has had the art of telling them
greatly. Anticipating the outcomes of a
visit to Burmah, he had written to William
Taylor to send him a man for the church
he would foimd on this visit. Questions of
ordinary missionary poUcy, Board provi-

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

sions, and the ceaseless questions of finance
that always give pause to such movements
had never too much place in Thoburn's plans,
and even less in Taylor's, and so the doctor
writes :

"The project was brought before the Rock
River Conference by Father Taylor, and the
members of that body quickly pledged
money enough to send a man to Rangoon,
and about the first of June I was greatly
surprised to receive a telegram announcing
the arrival of the Rev. R. E. Carter and
Mrs. Carter in Rangoon. I had hoped to be
there to receive them, but they had 'pre-
vented' me, as King James's translators
would have said, and so I had to make all
haste to go down and get the strangers set-
tled in their new home. Mr. Goodwin was
to go with me, and I asked him to be good
enough to procure tickets for our passage
by the next steamer.

" * Where shall I get the money?' he asked.

" *It was one of Napoleon's maxims,' I
replied, 'that war must support itself. We
must depend on making conquests in Ran-
goon and getting the sinews of wax from our
converts.'

114

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

"The agents of the steamer gave us re-
turn tickets for a nominal sum, and, after
a stormy passage of four days, we arrived
at Rangoon on Wednesday, May 11th. A
yoimg man who had been converted at one
of our Dasahra meetings in Lucknow met
us on the dock, and took us to his home.
Mr. Carter meanwhile had been hospitably
received by Baptist friends, and had
preached several times in a hired hall. The
American Baptists maintain a very strong
missionary force in Rangoon, but at the time
they did very little for the English-speaking
people. They had a small chapel in which
they preached on Sunday evenings and held
a prayer meeting on Wednesday evenings;
but they had not been able to give attention
to pastoral work, and gave us a cordial re-
ception when we came among them with the
avowed intention of making work among
the English-speaking classes our chief ob-
jective point. Their chapel, which held
about two hundred persons, was placed at
our disposal, and there we opened our com-
mission, and most of our services during this
visit were held in it.

"Going to Burmah from India was like

116

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

going from home to a foreign country. We
were in a strange land and among strange
people. The number of European and
Anglo-Burman inhabitants in Rangoon was
at that time estimated at three thousand.
Very few of these had ever seen a revival, or
knew anything about revival methods, and
we were to begin our work on f aUow ground.
I found that a much larger proportion of
the Europeans could speak the vernacular
of the province than in Calcutta, and this
afforded a hope that we might more easily
and quickly reach the natives than we had
been able to do in the latter city. We had
no caste rules nor caste prejudices to en-
counter, and altogether the way seemed to
lie wide open before us.

"The next week evening after our arrival
we began our meetings in the Baptist chapel.
The small room was not full, and it was at
once apparent that a revival meeting had as
yet very little power to draw an audience
in Rangoon. I announced meetings for both
morning and evening, and the next morning
about forty persons were present. After a
quiet talk I called for seekers, and eight per-
sons at once responded. A deep feeling was

116

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

manifest, and I felt assured that a blessed
work of salvation had commenced. At each
succeeding meeting the interest seemed to
increase, and awakenings and conversions
took place daily. We secured the town hall
for Sunday evening, put up posters on all
the streets, hired and borrowed seats from
far and near, and at the appointed hour an
immense crowd filled the place. I had a rare
opportimity to deliver the message of recon-
ciliation, and God stood by me and helped
me. The immediate fruit was very apparent,
and a new impetus was given to the meetings
in the chapel, and our hands and hearts were
burdened with work. At the two meetings
on Tuesday we had thirty-eight persons pub-
licly professed to have foimd salvation dur-
ing the previous meetings, and two days
later the number of persons who had pub-
licly come forward for prayers had risen to
eighty. The amount of work in the shape
of visiting from house to house, and patient
instruction and prayer with inquirers one
by one, which the presence of eighty awak-
ened sinners involved, will be readily un-
derstood by everyone who has had experi-
ence in winning souls. In Rangoon this kind

117

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

of work was new, and we had very few who
could help in such an emergency. Mr.
Goodwin and myself were soon worn down
with the incessant work into which God had
thrust us. Our strength, however, was as
our day, and we were able to hold up under
the heavy strain to the last.

*'On the second Sunday evening it seemed
as if almost the whole city had come together
in the town hall. God helped me again to
declare his word, and when at the close of
the sermon I called on awakened persons
who wished to be prayed for to rise, some
thirty persons stood up in the presence of
the congregation. It was a solemn hour. I
have seldom at any time seen a meeting at
which divine power was so manifestly pres-
ent. Again a fresh stimulus seemed to be
given to the meetings in the chapel, and by
the end of our second week in the city the
total numbers of seekers enrolled by us had
risen to one hundred and thirty.

"As my stay in Rangoon was to be short,
we had not neglected for a day the great
work of foundation-laying which we had in
view. Our first class meeting or fellowship
meeting, as we say in India, was held on the

118

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

fourth day after our arrival. Our church
was formally organized on the second Sun-
day, with twenty-nine members and pro-
bationers, but the number rose to fifty dur-
ing the next three days. A Quarterly Con-
ference was duly organized, three men
licensed to exhort, a pastor's fund secured,
and thus a thoroughly organized and fully
equipped church was established in Rangoon
within two weeks of our arrival. Nor was
this all. We had applied to the authorities
for the free gift of a site for a new church,
and had received assurance which virtually
made us owners of a fine lot at the junction
of two leading streets, and we had also col-
lected about one third of the cost of a new
church. Mr. Carter imf ortunately was pros-
trated with fever most of the time of my
visit, and as he was still very feeble, I left Mr.
Goodwin to help him for another fortnight,
while I returned to Calcutta. As I came
away I looked back upon the brief days of
my hurried visit to this most interesting city
with simple amazement. We had gone forth
without a rupee and had set up our banner
in a strange land and among a strange peo-
ple, trusting solely to the unchanging and

119

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

unfailing promises, and mountains had
melted before us. The banner was left wav-
ing, and is waving still. God had been in
the work, and the gates of hell were not to
prevail against the humble band which had
been gathered in his name. Christ had
gained another victory. Satan had been
again defeated."

Thus in a few rapid sentences does he
narrate one of the epics of modern missions.

The genuineness of his call to Rangoon
and the soimdness of the f oimdations he laid
may be judged by the later history of the
Burmah mission. It has not grown to
marked size, but it has demonstrated marked
efficiency, and is full of hope and well-devised
plans for a considerable contribution to the
evangelization of this most interesting land.
In all these labors for the Kingdom Dr.
Thoburn was enabled to secure the largest
results by his happy faculty of putting others
to work in whatever way might be possible
to them. He has had so much confidence in
the ability of every man to do something
worth while that he has always been ready
to trust untried men with considerable tasks.
He thus constantly inspired men to beheve

120

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

in their power to do things. It is surprising
how often the things were done. And many
a man to-day intrusted with largest matters
remembers Thoburn as the man who started
him on his career of usefubiess. He never
spared himself. He exacted full measure of
responsible work from others.

He says:

^'But if a patient submission to all that is
manifestly one's own work is a clear duty to
the missionary, it is no less a duty to lay all
possible burdens upon other shoulders just
as soon as God provides shoulders for the
purpose. Division of labor is a law of
Christ's kingdom, and it is more than a
blunder for Christian leaders to neglect to
utilize all the varieties of labor which God
puts within their reach. Every Christian
has a special adaptation to some form of
Christian work, and it is doing him a per-
sonal wrong to withhold from him the task
which God would have him perform. On the
mission field the temptation, or at least the
tendency, to shrink from intrusting native
churches with responsibility is very strong,
and hence it happens that some missionaries
are breaking down under some burdens for

121

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

which there are ready and willing shoulders
all around them. It is easy, of course, to
go too fast, and lay upon a feeble native
church responsibilities which it is not able to
carry ; but the danger of mistakes is almost
wholly in the other direction. It is the
natural method, the universal law of the
kingdom of God on earth, that in every land,
among every people. Christians should be
taught to manage their own affairs and carry
their own burdens."

Particularly was he happy in calling out
latent indigenous powers for service in the
churches he planted. The reason for this
success lay largely in his inner belief that
God can find and develop his agents every-
where. That evil saying "These people can-
not be trusted to do things right," whatever
the diflBcult task might be, was never ac-
cepted by Thoburn as the truth of the case.
He grasped better than most of us the divine
philosophy which must imderlie all mission-
ary training of the church in the field when
he writes:

"The Holy Spirit wonderfully distributes
all needed gifts for useful service in the
church, and if a wise discrimination is used

122

CALLED TO FARTHER INDIA

in the employment of the workers, it will
generally be found that with the develop-
ment of a Christian congregation workers
of all grades, and prepared for all kinds of
service, come to the front when needed. We
must not despise the service because it is
lowly. Too many are ready to take it for
granted that God only calls men to what
they regard as sacred or spiritual service,
and hence they are startled to hear it sug-
gested that a devoted woman has a call to
minister to the sick, although quite willing
to admit that her brother or husband may
have been called to preach the Word. It will
be a happy day for the Christian Church
when every form of Christian labor is digni-
fied by being recognized as a part of God's
service and when all grades and classes of
workers are recognized as equally honorable
in God's sight, and alike heirs to a blessed
reward. The seven deacons were not inferior
to the twelve apostles whose burdens they,
in part, assumed; and one of them speedily
rose to great eminence in the church, and but
for his untimely death would probably have
eclipsed the fame of the most illustrious
twelve. As in the case of Stephen, so with

123

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

many a modern worker has it happened that
a humble form of service is made a stepping-
stone to greater responsibilities. We never
know when initiating a new disciple into
some lowly form of service for the Master
what the outcome may be. *To him that
hath shall be given.' To the faithful worker
will be given higher service, and the success
in one trust becomes the earnest of still
greater success in other spheres."

124

CHAPTER XIII

CALLED TO A GREAT AD-
VENTURE

The story about to be told covers what
Dr. Thoburn is accustomed to term his
greatest missionary adventure— his caU to
Singapore and en7ry upon a mission to the
Malay world.

Between China on the north and east and
India to the north and west projects the
Malay Peninsula like a forefinger pointing
toward the south pole. At the tip of this
finger is the island and city of Singapore,
guarding the Straits which separate it from
Sumatra and give entrance to the Malay
archipelago — stretching from Sumatra up to
the Philippines and including such beautiful
rich and romantic lands as the islands of
Java, Borneo, Celebes, etc. These islands
with the Peninsula are included under the
general term Malaysia and are chiefly in-
habited by the Malays. In recent years,
however, their exceeding richness both in

125

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

valuable vegetable products, such as pepper,
tea, rubber, and gambler, and their large
production of tin ore, has brought to them
several millions of Chinese from South China
and Indians from South India and Ceylon.

The Malay Peninsula and some of the
neighboring islands are British possessions.
A large part of the archipelago, including
Sumatra, Java, and parts of Borneo, is
under the Dutch flag and forms the most
valuable possessions of the kingdom of Hol-
land. Many of the old-time Malay chiefs
still hold nominal rule over parts of the
archipelago, but the real control of affairs is
in the hands of these two European powers.

Singapore may justly be termed the
strategic center and the emporium of the
archipelago. This city of over three hun-
dred thousand enterprising people has four
to five thousand people of Enghsh descent,
such as Dr. Thoburn constantly used as
the base of approach to the surrounding
Asiatics. This community's religious needs
were but scantily met. Dr. Thoburn was
perhaps the best-known missionary in India.
Certainly among the Enghsh-speaking peo-
ple it was so. It was inevitable that he

126

A GREAT ADVENTURE

should come to desire and to receive invita-
tions to visit Singapore and there also to
preach the gospel.

And so it was. Particularly did urgent
request come from a godly Wesleyan,
Charles Phillips, who in absence of any
Methodist church was an elder in the Presby-
terian kirk. Being an earnest man, he had
built a chapel at his own expense, in which
he himself preached to the humbler Euro-
peans and served their families in several
ways. Mr. Phillips wrote often, urging Dr.
Thoburn's presence. Thoburn had the mat-
ter in mind and began to feel the inner pres-
sure — ^which with him always preceded the
making of any definite program of action.
He was not yet clear.

It was in the fall of 1883 that Bishop John
F. Hurst was in India to hold the Confer-
ences. In strange ways he came to India,
also impressed that a mission should be
opened in Singapore, to connect our grow-
ing missions in India and China. One of his
first inquiries when he met Thoburn in India
was, **What do you think of our opening
work in Singapore?" His startled hearer an-
swered that he had long had the matter in

127

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

mind, and that of late it had begun to press
upon him heavily, but there had been no
available man to put into the work if a mis-
sion were opened. Thobum has always been
very impatient of drilling oil wells without
being prepared to supply tankage at once
for any strike of oil. But when men like Dr.
Thoburn get such a matter seriously before
them, difficulties begin to disappear, par-
ticularly when a somewhat obstinate Meth-
odist bishop sets himself to help push things
through.

The result was that after much canvass of
several names. Dr. Thoburn and J. E. Rob-
inson named an imknown stranger who with
his wife was on his way to India, after several
years of absence in American colleges, to
serve as a missionary. The Bishop had never
heard the man's name before, and was in-
clined to object. But on Robinson saying,
with emphasis, "Bishop, if you do not ap-
point W. F. Oldham and wife to Singapore,
I don't want to have anything to do with the
case," the Bishop yielded, and in the appoint-
ments of the South India Conference for
1884 there appears the line, "Singapore
W. F. Oldham."

128

A GREAT ADVENTURE

When, a few days later, the Oldhams ar-
rived in Bombay, they were told of their ap-
pointment and that there was no financial
provision for their support. They quietly
accepted the appointment of lawful author-
ity, for had they not been trained under
Taylor and Thoburn to look into the face
of difficulties without shrinking if only they
might beheve God and the church were bid-
ding them go forward?

But Dr. Thoburn was not the man to bid
another go and not lead the way himself.
If a mission was to be planted in a strange
land among strange people without any
previous financial assurance, he would him-
self lead the way and show how it might be
done. And so it was that in a few weeks
there started from Calcutta a small group
of Methodist missionaries Jed by Dr. Tho-
burn and including the pastor designated for
Singapore.

On their way from Calcutta lay Rangoon,
Burmah. Reaching here, they foimd they
had no fimds to proceed to Singapore, four
days' steamer journey farther south. Dr.
Thoburn's resources, however, did not fail.
He talked with God and then called together

129

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

the Methodist people whom he himself had
gathered on a previous visit. He told them
of his plight and immediately a good lady
arose and said: "We must send these mes-
sengers of the gospel on to then- appointed
field." She walked up to the Doctor and
laid a fifty-rupee note before him. Others
followed ; it was like a Negro camp meeting
for a while. The giving was ^Tiilarious."
The proceeds more than paid for the four
tickets to Singapore.

Next morning on board Dr. Thoburn
quietly said, "The God who calls will open
L wly for hi. ob«Jie„t.erva„ts."

On reaching Singapore this strange epi-
sode occurred: There had been no oppor-
timity to notify Mr. Phillips of ihe Bishop's
coming, nor did he know anything of the
others of the party. But when the steamer
reached the dock he was there. He immedi-
ately walked up to Dr. Thoburn, saluting
him by name, and then, turning to the rest
of us, he said, "Well, you have brought
these friends with you to help.''

Dr. Thoburn was perplexed and said,
"How did you happen to be here, and how
did you know us?"

130

A GREAT ADVENTURE

Mr. Phillips repUed: "I saw you last night
in my sleep. I saw this steamer coming into
dock, and on it were you and your party,
just these who are with you. I was there-
fore on the dock waiting to welcome you.
Now, come along; you are all four to stay
with me."

We were deeply impressed, and the writer
of these lines bears witness after thirty-two
years to the feehng of devout gratitude
mingled with something like awe that filled
his mind. To Dr. Thoburn the incident
seemed impressive, but not surprising. Some
men are in such close touch with God that
he can aflford to be more familiar with them
in the manifestations of his gracious care.
There are several such incidents in the lives
of both Taylor and Thoburn. Let your very
practical souls that fear religious mystics
and enthusiasts explain as they may, only
do not forget the outcomes of such men's
labors in the midst of this workaday world.

SiNGAPOBE

Immediately after landing, the town hall
was secured and such advertisement as was
possible was put out, calling the people to-

131

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

gether to hear Dr. Thoburn, who was at that
time the best-known missionary in Southern
Asia. On the first evening a remarkable
company gathered to hear the preacher.

Singapore is the meeting place of the na-
tions. Here representatives of practically
all the various Asiatic peoples may be seen
mingling with many of the races of Europe.
The town haU gathering included many dif-
ferent kinds of white men and women with
a sprmkling of Tamils from India and Cey-
lon! a few Chinese from the coast of China,
and one inquisitive English-speaking Malay.
Mrs. Thoburn led the singing. Yoimg Old-
ham distributed the singing books, and Dr.
Thoburn took charge of the service. The
text was annoimced, "Not by might, nor by
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.''
With simplicity and directness the speaker
stated that the audience would reassemble
from evening to evening, that then: numbers
would increase, that not by might of human
eloquence, nor by power of human persua-
sion, but by the direct pressure of the divine
upon their minds and hearts, many of these
before him would be convicted of their sins
and some of them would turn to God and

132

A GREAT ADVENTURE

find newness of life. The service was so
exceedingly simple and the effect was so
profound that all the anticipations of the
speaker were more than fulfilled on the
nights that followed. Dr. Thobum himself
often referred to the ten days at Singapore
as being marked by a very distinct sense of
the immediate presence of God. At the close
of this brief mission those who had openly
accepted the gospel were called together and
a church was born.

It will interest the reader to know how this
Methodist Church, the first in southeastern
Asia, was organized. When Dr. Thoburn
and Mr. Oldham went over the list of those
who had become Methodists, they found
there but three — ^two men and a woman —
that could be mustered into office to begin
with. It was necessary that a Quarterly
Conference be organized. The appointed
evening came. The lady was scared and
therefore absented herself. One man was ill.
The only person present besides the self-ap-
pointed presiding elder and the venture-
somely appointed pastor was John Polglase.
Dr. Thoburn proceeded to organize him.
He was elected to all the offices to which

133

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

laymen were eligible in the church. Then
finally he was made the estimating commit-
tee on the preacher's salary and was asked
what Mr. and Mrs. Oldham could be ex-
pected to hve on, being informed at the same
time that he was the Board of Stewards, and
would be expected to go out and raise the
amount. The critical moment of the Quar-
terly Conference had arrived. But John
Polglase was an unusual man and he did not
back out. He finally smiUngly looked at
young Oldham and then at the Doctor and
said: "I think they can hve on seventy dol-
lars a month, and as to the raising of it, all
I can do is to try, and if Oldham can stand
the arrangement, of course I can.'*

Thus was founded the first Methodist
Church in Malaysia. The next day the Tho-
burn party embarked for Calcutta, leaving
Oldham behind to carry forward the enter-
prise. This he did as best he could. He
soon had the privilege of meeting some of
the progressive members of a Chinese de-
bating society. As a result a meeting of the
society was arranged at which Mr. Oldham
delivered a lecture on astronomy — a suitable
subject, he thought, for the audience of

134

A GREAT ADVENTURE

celestials. The lecture seemed to give pleas-
ure, and the young missionary was asked to
become a personal tutor of a prominent
Chinese gentleman, a member of this society.
As a result of this introduction to the
Chinese hfe of the city a school was opened
for the teaching of Enghsh to the sons of
Chinese merchants. A building was erected
which was paid for by the Chinese them-
selves. A Chinese teacher was hired to teach
that language, and Mr. Oldham himself be-
came a teacher of Enghsh. The school pros-
pered from the day it was opened. Soon
there were two hundred boys and young men
in attendance. A boarding department was
started and the young missionary within a
year returned to his Chinese patrons, calling
upon them for further accommodation to
make room for the increasing body of stu-
dents. These men trusted him, with the
result that still ampler accommodation was
aflforded, the Chinese paying the bills. That
school has now been in existence for thirty
years. Eighteen hundred yoimg people are
in its enrollment, and out of it have been
bom other schools, ranging from far Borneo
to the north of the Malay Peninsula, so that

136

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

there are now in the schools of the mission
in the neighborhood of ten thousand boys
and girls receiving a Christian education.
The whole educational movement is pro-
foundly affecting the life of these lands, and
the very largest religious results must ulti-
mately be the outcome. The last word reach-
ing us from this school tells of a ten days'
meeting held with the students. Ninety
young men presented themselves for Chris-
tian baptism and are now under close per-
sonal instruction.

For the encouragement of other mission-
ary teachers who may be spending long,
weary hours in what may seem the drudgery
of the day-schoolroom it may be remembered
that all the criticism of the earlier days, when
visiting missionaries and even wandering
episcopal stars ventured the opinion that
the messengers of the gospel would better
be engaged in preaching the New Testament
rather than in thumbing schoolbooks, has en-
tirely passed away. It is now well known that
the schools have softened prejudice and have
won their way to the innermost confidence
of the most influential people, and that there
are many openly professed Christians who

136

A GREAT ADVENTURE

were brought to Christ by theu* school-
teachers who were completely inaccessible to
the preaching of the missionary. The facti-
tious distinction between teaching the gospel
and preaching it finds no ground m the New
Testament, where Jesus commands his dis-
ciples to "preach the gospel" and "to teach
them all things/' The Spirit-filled preacher
is a great agent for the spread of the gos-
pel, but the Spirit-filled teacher has also his
secure and worthy place in bringing in the
Kingdom. Let each in honor prefer the
other and supplement him.
. The Malaysia Mission, now an Annual
Conference out of which was born the Philip-
pine Annual Conference, is using all the pos-
sible methods that modern missions have de-
vised for the evangelization and uplifting of
that vast territory where over sixty millions
of people are scattered over the islands, a
million square miles in area. Most notable
has been the welcome given by the scattered
Chinese to the teaching missionary who has
also been the preaching missionary, and
while the statistical results are not very large
because of the mobile character of the popu-
lation, the mission is slowly striking its roots

137

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

all through this vast archipelago, and won-
derful days are surely ahead. Bishop Tho-
burn, the pioneer of this mission, who took
Oldham there, has never ceased to declare
that this visit to Singapore was the crowning
adventure of his notable missionary career.

138

CHAPTER XIV

CALLED TO THE MISSIONARY

BISHOPRIC

De. Thobukn's widening labors did not
prevent his giving the closest attention to the
strengthening and confirming of the large
work ah-eady in hand in India. It will be
admitted by all students of missions that
Methodism has shown a fine genius not only
for the planting of missions, but for develop-
ing them when planted. The whole Meth-
odist system is pliable and not rigid, and
consists of checks and counter checks where-
by the various parts balance each other and
permit of sufficient minor change held within
fairly fixed bounds to allow the progress
without danger of wild plunging. Men
under such a system can often introduce very
marked changes in methods of procedure and
administration. But they can do this only
when they have earned the confidence and
when the proposed changes have in measure
been demonstrated. Nor can any greater
tribute be made to any Methodist leader than

139

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

to have him successfully inaugurate such
changes through the General Conference,
the governing body of the church. The safe
inference is that the man who has persuaded
strong men by the weight of his personality
and the urgency of his reasoning, and a mul-
titude of lesser men by the evident sanity of
his proposals, is by this fact acclaimed a
constructive builder as well as a man of
power. We say these things because some
of his contemporaries have expressed the be-
lief that Dr. Thoburn was a great mission-
ary, and a great religious pioneer, but that
he was not to be trusted as a builder of
policies and creator of improved plans and
methods of administration. Lesser minds
even when found in high places find it diffi-
cult to believe that men can combine high
qualities of diverse kinds. If a man be a
great orator, he cannot be a good financier,
Gladstone notwithstanding. If he be a dar-
ing and adventurous spirit, with little re-
spect for moribund traditions, how can he
also be an ecclesiastical builder?

Something of a new teaching in this re-
gard may perhaps be seen in the Methodist
Church ; but if it be so, it is one of the results

140

THE MISSIONARY BISHOPRIC

of the presence of men like Thoburn. Dr.
Thoburn went to the General Conference of
1888 held in New York city as a representa-
tive of the Bengal Conference, though he
really represented all India. The matter
that India desired most of that Greneral Con-
ference was a better method of episcopal
supervision. It may be necessary for our
younger readers to learn what led to this and
what has come of it.

Our foreign missions were then supervised
by general superintendents who visited them
once a year in succession. This visiting
superintendent was usually chosen by sen-
ioriiy in office rather than by any fitness for
a difficult and delicate piece of work in far-
off lands. The general superintendents were
men of wide domestic experience and were
often of marked intellectual power. But as
often they lacked any special knowledge of
the differing traditions and temperament,
the historical setting or current trends of the
civilizations among which the infant churches
were placed.

In addition to this there were the lure of
travel, the distraction of sight-seeing, and
often the claims upon their attention of their

141

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

families who accompanied them. All these
reasons combined to make the coming of the
bishop a matter of anxious speculation to the
missionary leaders on the field. Methodism
clothes its bishops with much power. Only
the closest knowledge of conditions among
which they work, added to ready insight,
freedom from undue leaning to personal
opinion, and a very large admixture of hum-
ble reliance upon the light and leading of the
Holy Spirit enable a Methodist bishop to
serve satisfactorily in any land. Absence of
any of these requirements makes success-
ful administration impossible. It is not sur-
prising that as the India mission grew in
strength it was less inchned to endure a sys-
tem under which a stranger came to the Con-
ferences each year without close knowledge
but with power to rearrange the work and
alter the appointments of the missionaries.
Having fixed the "Appointments," the
bishop was gone, to be seen on that soil no
more forever. All protests and discussions
in the home papers only drew forth the re-
tort that India was threatening the keystone
of the ecclesiastical structure — ^the general
superintendency.

142

THE MISSIONARY BISHOPRIC

To a mind like Thobiirn's this objection
had little weight. The existing plan did not
work. There was neither full intelligence
nor continuity in administration. There
must be some better way. With Africa it
was even worse. The supposed threat of the
African climate against life had made the
visitation of Africa much less popular than
of India and China and Japan. There were
few, if any, visits at aU. When any inspec-
tion was undertaken, the episcopal visitor
closely hugged the shore and at night slept
on board shipboard. It was rugged William
Taylor commg from the interior who de-
scribed the bishop as "overseeing the work
of God in Africa through a telescope from
the deck of a steamer." Africa had broken
away in 1884 from this method of "absent
treatment" by the resurrection of the "mis-
sionary episcopacy." India Methodism came
to the General Conference of 1888 insisting
that "intelligent, continuous supervision"
must be given her expanding work, and Tho-
burn, trusted leader at home and abroad, was
charged with securing the legislation. He
had spoken on the subject often, and had
written on it most luminously in the Meth-

143

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

odist Review and in the church press gen-
erally. Of course he was accused of per-
sonal ambition. This made no impression.

Truth to tell, he knew matters could be
adjusted vastly better than they were under
the existing system, and he and the whole
church knew that if any man were elected to
administer India, there was only one man to
be named, and that was James M. Thoburn.
Dr. A. B. Leonard, missionary secretary,
threw the whole force of his personality on
the side of the innovation, as did several
others who believed in Thoburn. As a re-
sult the missionary episcopacy was extended
to India and Dr. Thoburn was elected the
first "Missionary Bishop of Southern Asia,"
for he had himself abeady carried Indian
Methodism far beyond the bounds of India
proper. A general superintendent was to
visit India once a quadrennium as a coordi-
nate bishop. But Thoburn was for the next
dozen years the pilot and captain of Meth-
odism from the Himalaya Moimtains to the
borders of Australia.

How splendid the progress of these quad-
renniums, how masterly the programs laid
down, the impetus given, the results

144

THE MISSIONARY BISHOPRIC

achieved, may be read by the student who
inquires into the history of what Bishop Foss
has called "our most successful mission."
The writer would not withhold any least
atom of recognition of the worth and energy
of the other great men and women associated
with Thobum, but they would be among the
first to say the largest place must be given
to the clear-sighted, fearless, enterprising
man in whom God had combined the flaming
prophet, the brilliant leader, and the master
builder.

The further result of this movement was
to cause the General Conference to break
away from the tradition that all general
superintendents must live in the United
States. China needed intelligence and con-
tinuity of administration as much as did In-
dia. The bishops were therefore directed to
place one of their number there for terms of
service, gradually increasing in length imtil
we now have two of the most conspicuously
successful general superintendents making
the administration of China Methodism their
lifework. The plan has been extended to
Eiu-ope and South America and Japan.
But do not Kansas and Oregon and Maine

145

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

also need "continuous intelligent" adminis-
tration? They do and are now getting it
under a plan of which the missionary episco-
pacy was undoubtedly the forerunner. All
the fears of the traditionaUsts have proven
unfounded, though their clamors have not
wholly ceased, and the chiu*ch at large is re-
ceiving more quickening leadership from its
chief pastors than ever before in its history.
And this may perhaps be counted among the
by-products of Dr. Thoburn's prophetic
vision and practical capacity to concrete his
visions in useful legislation and plans.

A few years after the Malaysia Mission
was foimded, Dr. Thoburn, a born expan-
sionist, stood on the threshold of the mission
house at Singapore and looking eastward,
said, "I hope some day to see the walls bat-
tered down and the gospel preached in the
Philippines." At that time the Philippines
were under Spanish sovereignty and permis-
sion could not be had for either the circula-
tion or the preaching of the Bible. An effort
was made by the British and Foreign Bible
Society to send two colporteurs to Manila
with a supply of New Testaments. They
were seized and thrown into prison and their

146

THE MISSIONARY BISHOPRIC

books were burned on the Plaza, and one of
the colporteurs, a Spanish ex-priest, died.
His companion, a young Methodist local
preacher, Mr. Castelles, escaped with his life,
and returning to Singapore, declared it was
impossible to circulate the Scriptures in the
Philippines. Bishop Thobum knew of this
event and it stirred him to even stronger
desire to preach in the Philippines.

147

CHAPTER XV

CALLED TO THE FARTHEST

EAST

We need not go into the matter of what
led the United States in 1898 to interfere
with the Spanish domination of Cuba and
Porto Rico. A very imexpected result was
the bringing of the Philippines under the
Stars and Stripes.

While all America was intently watching
the West India Islands in the Atlantic the
surprisingly unexpected word reached New
York that Admiral Dewey had entered
Manila bay, had simk the Spanish fleet and
commenced the occupation of the island of
Luzon. Soon afterward a treaty was ar-
ranged, and Spain retired, and the U. S. A.
became the custodian of over eight millions
— Filipinos and Moros and wild hill tribes.
Our people were embarked upon the strange
and romantic adventiu*e of being trustees of
a people in far-off Asia, who were to be
trained into fitness for self-government by

148

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

being made intelKgently familiar with the
institutions of freedom and by being in-
ducted into such intelligence and moral self-
control and economic independence as would
warrant their being whoUy intrusted with the
direction of their own affairs. The strange
new task was welcomed with a sort of reli-
gious consecration. The people at large felt
that God was calling the nation to a higher
missionary errand. At the time Bishop Tho-
burn was in London. Rewrites:

"The third of May was an eventful day,
not only to me in London, but to a great
multitude of Americans scattered abroad
over the world. I wrote in my notebook:
'Manila is in American hands I God be
praised. Even since I began our Malaysia
work those islands had been in my mind, and
I had believed that God would ere many
years open them to the world and to the gos-
pel, but little did I dream that the work
would be done by Americans I'

"It became evident very quickly that the
sympathies of the people in London were
with the Americans in the war with Spain,
and although some of the papers seemed dis-
posed to criticize the course pursued by the

149

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

President, it was abundantly manifest that
the people at large had taken a correct view
of the principles involved and the actual
position of the parties. At that time the
position of England on the Pacific was not
too well assured, and in the case of serious
trouble Japan would have been the only
strong power on which to depend. The
Americans at Manila would not be allies,
and yet it seemed to be instinctively felt that
their very presence in that great sea had
completely changed the situation. I could
not move about in London without becom-
ing impressed with the very manifest good
f eeUng that prevailed among the people gen-
erally toward the United States and the
American people."

He then returned to India and says :
"We arrived back in Bombay on the 12th
of August, and at once found ample work
and care awaiting us, with calls from almost
every part of India requesting personal help
in some form, and at the earliest possible
day. I at once began work by calling the
Finance Committee of the Bombay Confer-
ence together, and trying to arrange our esti-
mates for the next year, but after two days

150

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

of perplexing and wearisome work I wrote
in my diary, 'Beating the air is the hardest
kind of work/ About the same time Dr.
Leonard wrote suggesting that I visit the
Philippines, but as active fighting was going
on there the time seemed premature. But
I was giving very close attention to the situ-
ation in those distant islands, and had no
thought of neglecting what I clearly recog-
nized as one of the most remarkable tokens
of God's providential government in modern
times. For a long time I had been praying
that God would give us an entrance to those
islands, and our missionaries in Singapore
and Penang had been not only praying, but
a local preacher had actually gone to Manila,
but only to be arrested and put in prison."

Soon afterward the Bishop proceeded to
Manila alone, calling at Singapore. The
Filipinos, mistaking the errand which
brought the Americans to them, supposed
that they had merely come to supplant the
Spaniards as their masters. They therefore
rallied imder General Aguinaldo, and at-
tacked the Americans in and around Manila.
Bishop Thobum arrived when Aguinaldo's
forces were lying just outside the city, and

151

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

his rifle bullets pattered on the roofs of the
houses. But he was undismayed. God's mis-
sionary servants are not easily turned aside
from the errands of duty. And, as is ever
the way, there were small tokens of the divine
favor which greatly cheered the missionary
adventurer. He came to the only available
hotel, and was told there was no vacant room.
He put down his bag and sat outside the
door, asking the Master to direct his steps.

He was rapidly approached by a military
oflScer who said, "Do you want a room?

"Yes, but there is none vacant."

"Well, I am just leaving. Bring your
bag in here and take possession. That's al-
ways nme points of the law, you know."

The advice was taken and the Bishop was
safely lodged. He immediately began a mis-
sionary reconnoissance of the situation. He
visited the soldiers in the trenches outside
of the city itself. So Kttle did the Spaniards
as well as the Fihpinos understand the spirit
and temper of the American people that he
was offered one of the handsomest Roman
Catholic churches for a trifling sum. But
he was not seeking bargains from frightened
and mistaken people, and did not even make

152

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

inquiries whether the offer was being made
by those who had the right to sell. Indeed,
church buildings as such had never had any-
large place in Bishop Thoburn's thinking.
He always sought to develop life and work-
ing energy rather than plant and machinery,
although he never hesitated to make exten-
sive purchase when the promotion of Hfe
needed the outer surroundings. He soon
found an empty theater named for the Fili-
pino patriot Rizal, and immediately hired it
for a Sunday service. He had already found
an old time American local preacher from
India, Brother Prautch, who had gathered
around him a small group of inquiring Filipi-
nos. With his help the theater meeting was
advertised and an interpreter was found.
When Simday morning came, once more this
servant of God stood in a strange land which
had long been an object of his earnest de-
sire, to preach the gospel which he had
proved over the wide lands he had traveled.
Some who were at this first Methodist serv-
ice in the farthest East tell of its simplicity
and deep solemnity. The prayers and the
sermon were punctuated at intervals by the
zip and splash of rifle bullets falling on the

153

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

zinc roof. Among the notable results of the
meeting was the finding of Nicholas Zamora,
of whom we will hear again later. It is to
be noted that the collection taken in that
theater paid all the expenses and encouraged
the Bishop to go forward with his plans.

In the midst of the agitations of a city
under fire and the even greater compUcations
of the misunderstandings between the Amer-
icans and the Filipinos there was born one
of the great missions of the chiu*ch under
the fostering care of this apostoKc man. And
what a mission it was, and how wonderful
in its present work and influence 1 Siwely,
the Spirit that whispered in Thobiu'n's ear
many years beforehand that the walls around
the Philippines would fall, and the people
be given free access to the gospel was not
absent in the events that led to America's
assuming the guardianship of these fair is-
lands. The presence of republican institu-
tions, the blowing of the free winds of Amer-
ican liberty, the large extension of the use
of the English language, the closer acquaint-
ance with the inner life and movement of a
Protestant people, have all helped to make
the Philippine Mission the most fruitful and

154

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

promising of all the missions of the church
in Roman Catholic lands. In a decade and
a half a membership of fifty thousand is re-
ported. And this very imperfectly conveys
the very great influence exercised upon all
life, pubUc and domestic, by the evangelical
missions of the American church.

They not only have gathered one hundred
thousand people into actual membership,
but have powerfully aided in liberalizing
thought, in informing aspirations for liberty
with intelligence, in promoting thrift — in a
word, in helping to lay in a people's charac-
ter and intelligence the firmest foundations
for both self-government and progress.
Among the first of these evangelical forces
in bringing a nation into the currents of
modern Hfe is that Methodist mission, whose
genesis under Bishop Thobiun's leadership
we have all too briefly told. The early days
of the mission were full of difficulty and dis-
appointment. Bishpp Thoburn writes two
years after his first visit :

"We got away from Singapore on Wed-
nesday, February 28, 1900, and arrived in
Manila on March 6, and I took a room in
the leading hotel for the sake of the seclu-

155

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

sion and quiet which I hoped to find there.
When I found time to look into the condi-
tion of our work I found what at that time
I called a 'tangled situation.' I had been
peculiarly unsuccessful in finding a suitable
man for the post of superintendent of our
Philippine work, and on one occasion at
least public attention had been called to my
seeming neglect. Only those who have had
the experience in work of this kind could ap-
preciate the difficulties which I encountei'ed
in trying to fill this vacant post."

"But in the end God so led us that the
work was fully organized, and our mission
became conspicuous both for its effective
organization and remarkable success. The
work, however, had by no means been neg-
lected. Several army chaplains had ren-
dered assistance, Mr. Prautch, who at that
time was working in regular connection with
us, was very active, and Mr. Goodrich, the
agent of the Bible Society, was a minister
of our church. The Woman's Foreign Mis-
sionary Society was represented by four
ladies, but they had not been able to secure
a comfortable place of living, and were much
cramped in their work. The outlook was not

156

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

very encouraging, but when measured by the
average missionary standard it was by no
means hopeless. Religious services had been
held regularly, many persons were manifest-
ing an encouraging interest in the work, and
the whole community was evidently more or
less awake. The Presbyterian missionaries
were working successfully near by, and I
heard reports of other parties who were ex-
pecting to enter the field. Our services were
conducted in a hired house, which for want
of a better name was called the ^Institute.'
It served its temporary purpose fairly well,
and *our own hired house' was somewhat
after the memorable precedent mentioned in
the New Testament.

"In the evening of our first day on shore
I wrote: 'We had a prolonged meeting of
oiu* little band of workers this evening. We
formally organized a Quarterly Conference,
licensed Nicholas Zamora as a local preacher,
and after a very long discussion decided to
ordain him by getting him admitted on trial
in a home Conference, and elected to dea-
con's orders by cable.' I, accordingly, sent
the following message through Dr. Leonard
to Bishop Vincent, who I knew was at that

167

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

date presiding at the regular session of the
South Kansas Conference: 'Admit Nicholas
Zamora to Conference probation. Elect to
deacon's orders. Transfer to Malaysia Mis-
sion Conference. Answer.'

"In the evening of the next day I received
the following reply: 'Zamora admitted,
elected, transferred.' When this message
was made known there was no small stir in
our little circle. Time was precious, and I
immediately announced that an ordination
service would take place at nine o'clock of
Saturday, March 10th. A small company
gathered, including a dozen or more Fihpino
women, and I ordained the young man a
deacon. The service was impressive, and a
deep feeling was manifest in the little com-
pany. The father of the candidate was pres-
ent and was deeply moved. It was very un-
fortunate that a little misunderstanding
existed in relation to the church relation to
the candidate. The father with his family
had joined the Presbyterian mission, but
when the Methodists arrived and were in
great need of a Spanish-speaking preacher,
he proposed that his son Nicholas should join
the Methodists for the sake of helping the

158

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

great work, while he himself with the rest of
his family should remain with the Presby-
terians. As the matter was put before me
the whole transaction seemed to be a beau-
tiful illustration of high-grade missionary
comity, and not for a moment did a misgiv-
ing arise in my mind concerning the right-
fulness of the transaction.

"This young man, Nicholas Zamora,
proved to be a man of eloquence and power.
He very rapidly rose in distinction, and
proved not only to have the gift of eloquence,
but of leadership also. He attracted atten-
tion almost from the first, and beyond all
question he was a power for good, not only
in Manila but wherever the Filipino people
were stirring. A great future lay before
him, but his position was a difficult one, and
his peril very great. Not many men of the
same age in America would have been un-
moved by the influences which he encoun-
tered. To become an independent leader of
a great local church, to dispose of his income
according to his own judgment, to construct
the framework of his church organization,
to be the spokesman of a great community
were things which conspired to lead him into

159

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

a course which must in the end have proved
too much for one so young and inexperi-
enced."

The next quotations refer to the unhappy
fact that Zamora, moved by a certain racial
impatience for complete independence and
by a desire to have himself elected the gen-
eral superintendent of the Filipino Meth-
odist Church, foolishly led a secession which
in a few years melted into nothingness :

"The reader may justly think that I
should assume my share of the blame for
what has since occurred. But at that time
and under the circumstances, it seemed abso-
lutely necessary to take a bold forward step,
and it really was necessary. Something had
to be done. Thousands and tens of thou-
sands clamored for a free gospel, the sacra-
ments of the church, and the solemnization
of Christian marriage. Thousands of un-
married parents were forced to bring up
their children as so many heathen because
wicked priests would not solemnize a legal
marriage without payment of a fee beyond
the means of the parties. I am sorry, very
sorry, for poor Zamora, but I do not give
him up/'

160

CALLED TO FARTHEST EAST

Once more the Bishop was in the Philip-
pines. The jubilee visitation of Southern
Asia in 1906 took Secretary Leonard and
several other American visitors to India. Of
these only the missionary secretary and
Bishop Thoburn reached Manila. The
Bishop was no longer in the fullness of his
strength. But the wide outlook, his undying
enthusiasm, his confirmed belief in the ad-
vancing conquests of the gospel all served to
cheer the young church. The Conference
sermon, preached to the assembled Americans
and Filipinos, was the last the writer has
heard from the Bishop. It had all the old-
time power and was notable for breadth of
vision, the deep human sympathy, and the
unfaltering trust in God that it expressed.
In eight short years a Conference had grown
up, and it was given God's honored servant
to see the fruit of his own earlier planting.
Soon after the Conference he embarked for
America. And so there passed from the
coasts of Asia a great personality who in the
years to come will be numbered with Carey
and Martyn and Morrison and Judson and
Duff, as among the greatest of the princely
men of the Kingdom.

161

CHAPTER XVI
CALLED TO A QUIET HOUR

Time is a furnace we fan with our sighs
and feed with all our treasures. But there
are some things even time has no power to
touch. In nothing is the difference more
marked than in the way old age affects men.
To the mere selfish man of the world it usu-
ally brings loss of interest in any but the
narrowest round of personal matters, often
attended by peevishness and strange suspi-
cions and jealousies. But to one who has
spent his life in the service of men, finding
his inspiration in the felt presence of God,
old age has no terrors. It is the "quiet hour"
of evening to which he is invited. The heat
of the day is over, the burdens laid down;
time is now for trooping memories of earth
and glad premonitions of heaven, and in the
midst of it all the dearly felt Presence.

Not long after Bishop Thoburn's return
from his last world tour, the Grcneral Con-
ference assembled in Baltimore in May,
1908. The Bishop was still in much vigor

162

CALLED TO A QUIET HOUR

of body, but at seventy-three there can
scarcely be expected the physical strength to
administer a wide and difficult field. He
therefore addressed the Conference, asking
for the relation of a retired missionary
bishop. It was one of the high moments of
the Conference when the beloved missionary
appeared and read his simple valedictory
statement presenting his request for retire-
ment as follows:

"Fifty years ago, while a youth, preaching
on a coimtry circuit in Ohio, I accepted a
call from God and his church to missionary
work in India. The following year I sailed
for my field and have since been associated
with our missionaries in that country. For
this privilege I cannot be sufficiently thank-
ful, imder God, to our church and her noble
Missionary Society.

"God has spared my life and given me
splendid opportunities for achieving suc-
cess. To him supremely and to you, dear
fathers and brethren, as representing his
church, I beg to express my unspeakable
thanks. But with the lapse of years and the
increase of life's burdens, I have become con-
vinced that the time has come for me to lay

163

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

down my official responsibility and only at-
tempt such tasks as changed conditions may
permit. I therefore respectfully request that
you will be good enough to grant me the
relation of a retired missionary bishop under
such conditions as may commend themselves
to your judgment. Again thanking you and
in your name thanking the church for the
splendid opportunity you have given me, I
remain, dear fathers and brethren, your
obedient and grateful servant,

"James M. Thobuen."

Concerning this request The Christian
Advocate said:

"A small man, whose dark skin was in con-
trast with his snowy beard, asked permission
to say a few words. A hush fell upon all
as he read the brief and simple outline of
his life and asked to be allowed to retire from
active service as a missionary bishop. It
was James M. Thoburn, general of the
forces of Southern Asia, the Christ-led
leader of the Methodist advance, the man
who laid the plans of campaign and has
lived to hear the first shouts of the returning
victors/'

Acting upon the request, the Committee

164

CALLED TO A QUIET HOUR

on Episcopacy presented the following
recommendation :

^^WhereaSj We have learned with pro-
foimd regret that our esteemed and beloved
Missionary Bishop, James M. Thoburn, has
felt compelled to ask for superannuation;
and

^^ Whereas J His long years of service to the
church have been given in a spirit of devotion
and sacrifice rarely equaled; therefore, be it

''Resolvedj That we recommend that this
request be granted, and we hereby record our
high appreciation of his life of magnifi-
cent missionary achievement and apostolic
activity, and devoutly pray that the bless-
ings of God may be increasingly upon him
and that his last years may be a triumphant
coronation of his beneficent life."

Dr. James M. Buckley, chairman of the
Comjnittee on Episcopacy, spoke as follows :

"Mr. President, the committee feels
keenly its inability to express its own feel-
ing, and the feeling of the General Confer-
ence, and the feeling of the whole church,
and, further, the feeling of the whole mis-
sionary and Protestant world. [Applause.]
There has never been a man like unto him in

165

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

the Methodist Episcopal Church, for the
purpose to which he devoted his life. [Ap-
plause.] With simplicity mingled with
sagacity ; with straightforward English, und
yet at times, imder inspiration reaching the
spirit and the words of the ancient prophets,
but more frequently of the Apostle John, he
has persuaded us when he could not con-
vince, and convinced us when he could not
persuade. Consequently he has had his way,
which he believed was God's way.

"Bishop Thoburn [Bishop Thoburn rises],
we have fought together in the IMissionary
Boards for a generation almost. We did not
always see eye to eye, but we always saw
heart to heart. I am glad and sorry to be
here. Sorry because you have felt compelled
to retire ; glad that this body and our church
love you, and, furthermore, that they will
venerate you to the last hour of your life,
and think of you to the last hour of their
lives. [Applause.] JVIay the Lord bless
you abundantly, and may you see yet greater
things in India and greater things in every
mission, and may your last hours be as sweet
as those who sleep after a tired, but a suc-
cessful day. [Applause.]'*

166

CALLED TO A QUIET HOUR

In response Bishop Thobum said:
"Dear brethren, I am overwhehned. I
have encountered many diflSciilties that I did
not anticipate, and, with God's blessing, I
think sometimes I have achieved greater suc-
cess than I dreamed of in my youth; but I
never anticipated such a scene as that
through which I am now passing. My
limited vocabulary will not enable me to ex-
press my feelings even if my feelings per-
mitted me to use the vocabulary.

"As I leave you, I simply ask that you
will kindly change the word ^superannuate'
to ^retire.' [Applause.] I have not quit
work. I expect to see some great victories,
although not in the land of my adoption, but
in the land of my birth, and possibly else-
where. And my parting word to you is that
you will carry with you always the convic-
tion that when Jesus Christ said that he
would *be with you always' he meant what
he said. He has been with me through these
years. I have been enabled to say a great
many thousand times that I think I know
him. I am sure he knows me. He knows
you and loves you, and has pledged his word
that he will be with you. And when we get

167

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

that universal conviction through our church
we will more rapidly help to transform this
world than the most sanguine among us has
ever dreamed. Now, may God bless you
forevermore. Thanks for your kindness to
me. [Applause.]"

Dr. A. B. Leonard, secretary of the Board
of Foreign Missions, closed this incident
with a tribute expressing the high regard in
which Bishop Thobiu-n is held by those
among whom he has spent the long years of
active service. Dr. Leonard said :

"Mr. Chairman, I think I ought to bring
at this moment to this General Conference
a tribute that would be voiced by oiu" church
in all Southern Asia.

"It was my privilege a year ago to be in
the company of Bishop Thobiu-n at each of
the nine Conferences of Southern Asia. And
I want to say to this General Conference that
the devotion and reverence felt and mani-
fested toward Bishop Thoburn in all that
country was most beautiful. The natives
and missionaries rallied around him, and
they regard him as having been their leader
through providence for these many years.
When the Bengal Conference was in session

168

CALLED TO A QUIET HOUR

in Calcutta the trustees of the church which
Bishop Thoburn founded, the building of
which he erected, that will accommodate fif-
teen hundred people, was crowded two Sun-
day nights to hear his sermons; and the
trustees, during the session by unanimous
vote, changed the name of that church, and
in place of the First Methodist Episcopal
Church of Calcutta, it is to be known here-
after as the * James M. Thoburn Memorial
Church* [Applause]."

169

CHAPTER XVII
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Retiring from active life, Bishop Tho-
burn decided to spend his closing days in
Meadville, Pennsylvania, where he had been
a happy college student in his youth. The
citizens of that beautiful city welcomed his
coming with the gift of a home. And there,
respected and beloved by all, his spirit as
cheery as ever, surrounded by his children
and grandchildren, the Bishop spends the
"quiet hour'* which is given him before he
shall be smnmoned to walk through the gates
of day.

In this closing chapter the writer would
emphasize what has been dwelt upon all
through these brief sketches: "A good man's
steps are ordered of the Lord." The Divine
Immanence may be constantly attested, if
we will welcome it, by such illumination of
our understanding and such inner persua-
sions of our mind as will leave us without rea-
sonable doubt that we are being divinely

170

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

guided along the way. His strong persua-
sion of this truth is the key to the remarkable
career of that most remarkable man James
Mills Thoburn, missionary, statesman, and
bishop.

It will interest the reader to learn Bishop
Thoburn's mature opinion on several mat-
ters. The writer therefore takes the liberty
of reproducing the Bishop's answers to a
series of written questions.

It must be confessed that the Bishop is
not easily interviewed, for he has a certain
impatience with any questions that he thinks
to be merely academic. His replies, there-
fore, are often brief, but they give us never-
theless the gist of the thinking of a man who
has thought more deeply than most :

"Will you mind telling us how it comes to
pass that the Methodists have succeeded so
widely in India?"

"I do not think our success has been so
great. I can only recognize oiu" success in
a relative sense. I do not think we have
really had very extraordinary success; rela-
tively we may have had."

"What has prevented our obtaining that
larger success that is in your mind?"

171

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

"The absence of capable agents on the
field."

"Do you mean among the missionaries im-
ported, or the native agents on the ground?'*

"I mean, in the first place, men and
women from the homeland who could enter
into the same kind of work we were doing.
A favorite theory of mine, in almost every
kind of human effort, is that the most impor-
tant agency in a given situation is leadership.
It is needed everywhere. I have often been
led to say that in the selection of bishops for
the church leadership should be the first
qualification. I have seen not a few bishops
myself who could not lead at all in a new
movement. We all know how the leadership
of Christ has been placed in the New Testa-
ment before the eyes of the church. *He
shall gently lead.* "

"What would you mark as the qualities
that you would seek for in these leaders?
What qualities are we to try to find in the
missionary?"

"In the first place, he should have a per-
sonal knowledge of Jesus Christ as the living
Saviour of men, *That they might know thee,
and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.' That

172

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

knowledge, I take it, should be personal. It
goes without saying that a missionary should
have, in a personal and practical sense of the
word, knowledge of human nature and char-
acter. In a practical sense of the word he
should be unselfish, always on the alert to
help any fellow being who needs assistance.
A missionary must have no indolent habits.
Indolence is an infirmity which is infectious.
Missionaries must have capacity for spiritual
friendship. I have frequently seen in the
foreign land an illustration of personal affec-
tion which reminds me of that which exists
among relatives. Personally, I have learned
to imderstand this by the experiences
through which I have passed, and have often
met persons in different parts of the world
who introduced themselves to me as related
to missionaries who knew me. I cannot call
it a special kind of social Masonry, but it is,
rather, something peculiar to the whole mis-
sionary community, throughout the world."

"Please tell us as you look forward, what
your expectation is as to the progress of
Christianity."

"I have given much thought to this gen-
eral subject. It seems to me both logical

173

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

and scriptural to regard the general Chris-
tianity of the world as intended from the
beginning to be a common movement which
either ignores national boundary lines, or at
least insists on giving them a subordinate
place. For many generations there will be
separations caused by language. But I can-
not believe that a separation based on mere
diflferences of opinion within narrow lines
can be permanent. Men may not be able, a
thousand years hence, to see all manner of
subjects aUke, but, on the other hand, it will
be impossible for them a thousand years
hence to hold aloof from one another merely
because they do not have a common vision.
In spite of the European war, I still believe
that God has a plan in reserve, to so direct
all manner of pubUc movements and meas-
ures in Europe that these suffering nations
shall yet be able to live in a state of peace,
and not only peace, but practically loving
good will."

"I am thinking, Bishop, more of the Mos-
lem and non-Christian world— what is the
effect of Christianity upon these other sys-
tems?''

"I think all the other systems will melt

174

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

into Christianity, but Islamism will be the
last. And I think Hinduism is afready in
a state of decay, and that probably Moham-
medanism will be the last foe to be destroyed
in the Oriental world. But, on the othei*
hand, I have sometimes thought that Islam-
ism will go with a rush when it begins td
melt. I do not think that the full time for
Mohammedanism has yet come in the East.
The Mohammedan falls back a great deal
on his political strength. He still thinks he
is a big fellow in the fighting world. As a
matter of fact, he is getting into very narrow
lines. This European war will have a good
deal to do with the future of Mohamme-
danism."

"What has been your position and what
your experience in regard to what is often
referred to as the doctrine of Holiness, or
perfect sanctification?"

"In common with nearly all young people
who were really earnest in their religious
profession, this doctrine affected me at an
early day. I never was reckoned as an op-
ponent to it, and I never was recognized gen-
erally in Christian circles as a professor of
this grace. I never was quite able to accept

176

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

the statement which was made on this sub-
ject, by preachers and others, and yet my
sympathies were more freely given to them
than to those who allowed themselves to be
called opponents of such a profession."

"What position did this doctrine hold in
your missionary teachings, when you were
actually yourself leading others?"

"In India while engaged in missionary
work I found opinions and sympathies and
professions almost identical with that I had
left behind me in America. We had the
same variations in testimony, the same ques-
tionings concerning the standards to be
adopted, the same bouts at certain points.
But, as a rule, I found throughout my whole
missionary life that persons who had in any
marked degree large spiritual power in their
work were prepared to accept a profession of
unquestioning and absolutely complete satis-
faction of all actual spiritual desires in the
immediate and actual presence of the living
Christ."

176

CHAPTER XVin

PERSONAL TRIBUTE FROM
BISHOP WARNE

We add a brief word from the senior
Bishop of India, who has known Bishop
Thobum closely and has been intimately as-
sociated with him through many years of
service. He speaks not only for himself, but
for that great company of Indian fellow
workers who rejoiced to follow Bishop Tho-
bum as a leader, while they loved him as a
companion and friend.

The part and place Bishop Asbury had
in making the early history of American
Methodism, Bishop Thobwn has had in
making the early history of our church in
Southern Asia. A comparison of the lives
of these two men and tiieir careers calls at-
tention to facts in the history of our Church
on two continents that are full of interest.
For example, Asbury was missionary to the

177

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

newest, while Thoburn went to the oldest
continent. Neither in the technical sense
was a founder of the churches, for each went
to his respective field with the second party
of missionaries about two years after the
first. Further, Asbury was a man of small
stature, and in this Bishop Thoburn re-
sembles him, both being about the size of
John Wesley, and, like Wesley, each was
noted for having good common sense, great
tact, quick discernment, restless energy,
much patience, far-seeing vision, fervent
spirituality, mighty faith, and an iron stead-
fastness of purpose. Methodist history
furnishes the startling coincidence of having
three men of such a similar type leaders in
the planting of Methodism in three great
lands. Both Asbury and Thoburn were
acknowledged leaders, each in his own field,
before being made bishops. In each field
there were about fifteen thousand Christians,
when these men were elected. Asbury lived
to see two hundred thousand members of the
Methodist Episcopal Church in America,
and Thoburn remained effective long enough
to see a Methodist Christian community of
about two himdred thousand in Southern

178

TRIBUTE FROM BISHOP WARNE

Asia.* Who can predict what he may yet
live to see?

The American branch of Methodism was
planted in India, as truly as was the apos-
tolic church, by divinely called and spirit-
ually equipped men and women. A story
of these founders and their work, unsur-
passed in Methodist history, is yet to be writ-
ten. James Mills Thoburn early became the
recognized leader of these pioneers. Tho-
burn from being the most influential man in
India Methodism soon became widely recog-
nized by the other churches as a man of great
spiritual power and as one of the "most dis-
tinguished living missionaries in India."

In Bishop Thoburn's unique and highly
pleasing personality there was an uncommon
blending of practical sense and mysticism,
a relieving sense of humor, charming sim-
plicity, winsome sincerity, and prophetic
vision. Through the medium of his remark-
ably clear, strong, and melodious voice, Tho-
biuTi had a preaching power that brought an
audience imder the spell of the messenger
and his message after the manner of Bishop

^ In the yeais of his retirement this number has nearly
doubled. ,

179

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

Simpson, but surpassing Bishop Simpson in
power to win men to surrender and serve our
crucified, risen, and ascended Lord. This
extraordinary combination of graces and
gifts in Bishop Thoburn's personality, and
the outcome of his life, impel one to believe,
that as truly as was Paul, Thobum was
"separated imto the gospel of God" for the
people to whom he was sent. May I briefly
outline his career under his three distinctive
characteristics — Thoburn the Evangelist,
Missionary Statesman, and Prophet.

Thobuen the Evangelist

Getting people genuinely saved was the
controlling passion of Bishop Thoburn's
whole life. Rev. J. J. Lucas, a senior Amer-
ican Presbyterian missionary in India, tells
a characteristic story. "While Thobum was
yet a young man he was sent to Allahabad as
a fraternal delegate from the North India
Conference to the Presbyterian Synod. I
have forgotten," says Dr. Lucas, "the fra-
ternal address, but remember vividly his ad-
dress to a little company of poor people liv-
ing in the raUway lines, who had invited him
to speak to them. This message at once led

180

TRIBUTE FROM BISHOP WARNE

to conversions and afterward to the found-
ing of Methodism in Allahabad. He had
been sent not as evangelist, but as a delegate,
but saw his opportunity. Further, he util-
ized a Hindu festival holiday for the in-
auguration of the Lucknow Dasehra Meet-
ings." These meetings have been greatly
used in uniting the various denominations in
India, and for evangelism for forty years,
and have become a model for conventions all
over India. Dr. Lucas adds, "The secret
of his great success was in that he quickly
recognized opportunities for evangelism,
and as quickly with courage and hope seized
them." Let these two incidents tell a story
of evangelism fifty years long. That evan-
gelistic spirit abides in India to this day.

Thoburn's conception of evangelism led to
a revolution in India in missionary methods.
From the beginning of Indian missions it
had been, in the main, the aim of missionaries
to secure converts from among the high-caste
people, with the hope that since they were
the religious leaders of India, they would
lead the masses to Christ. The outcome had
been exceedingly disappointing. Thoburn
and Parker, a David and Jonathan, both

181

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

evangelists, with others fired with the same
spirit, meditated long upon the fact that
Christ was anointed to preach to the "poor,"
"captives," "blind," and "bruised." They
knew that no country had ever been Chris-
tianized by a select few. They therefore,
followed providential leadings and entered
open doors, which in India were found
among the lower castes. It requires courage
and vision to do the unpopular thing, but
this early low-caste work was the forerunner
of India's present mass movements, and now
other missions are following the lead.

Thobuen the Missionary Statesman

Thoburn wrote: "A true missionary is no
dreamer. He is a practical man. His vision
pierces the heavens above him and penetrates
far into the dim regions before him. He
sees the hand of God upon the nations."
How could the writer of that avoid being
a missionary statesman? Early in his mis-
sionary career he began to look beyond the
province, to which our mission was confined,
because, it contained only forty million peo-
ple, and began to look upon the Indian em-
pire and the regions beyond, and to plan

182

TRIBUTE FROM BISHOP WARNE

expansion. Here are some of the ways in
which he showed his statesmanship.

Thoburn early saw a similarity between
the Roman and British empires. He re-
called the way in which the Roman empire
had miited nations, built great connecting
roads, and caused the spread of two great
languages, and thus unwittingly, whUe op-
posing Christianity, was opening its way.
He believed that what the Roman empire
had been to the Mediterranean region the
British empire was to be to the Eastern
world, for on her ships the whole Far East
was easily reached. He saw that it covered
three times the territory of the Roman em-
pire and included many times more people,
and that a common language was spreading
through all the East. He believed that the
British empire had been raised up by infinite
wisdom and for a purpose divine.

Within these empires Thoburn saw a
similarity between the "Dispersion of the
Jews" and the "Anglo-Saxon Dispersion,"
which he believed would go on increasing
through the centuries. Early from his
mountain home he looked out over this em-
pire, and years before William Taylor ar-

183

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

rived in India, Thoburn had sent to a brother
missionary "A plan for getting Taylor out
to India, and having him open our way to
all the great cities of the empire by preach-
ing in English to the English-speaking peo-
ple," and to this end had invited Taylor to
India. When Taylor came he joined him
in work among Europeans, and as an out-
come his mountain visions were realized, and
the great church Thoburn built and main-
tained in Calcutta made him known through-
out India and the Methodist world. The
Europeans lived chiefly in the great cities,
and their evangelism and organization into
churches led to the establishment of our
church in all the great cities, except one,
from Quetta to Manila, a distance of over
five thousand miles. This work among Euro-
peans planted Methodism in city centers that
influence over four hundred and fifty million
people. Great was such statesmanship.

The zenana and caste system, child-mar-
riage and enforced widowhood, had made the
condition of India's women so desperate that
missionaries had not found a pathway for
their deliverance, education, and evangeliza-
tion. Meditating long upon the awfulness

184

TRIBUTE FROM BISHOP WARNE

of their situation, Dr. Thoburn at last ear-
nestly invited his own sister to come to
India. Here again the missionary states-
man saw the need, the way out, and made
the call to America's Christian womanhood
to come to the relief of Asia's Christless
womanhood. American Methodist women
responded, and we have our great Woman's
Foreign Missionary Society, now blessing
the women of aU non-Christian lands.

As a missionary statesman, Thoburn was
as much interested in the church at home as
on the mission field. Some have even
thought that the greatest work of his life
for India, and the missionary world gen-
erally, is to be found in what he did by way
of enhghtening, inspiring, and enthusing the
home churches. For many years he worked
to secure an organization as an educating
and collecting agency in each congregation.
It was his constant contention that to obey
the farewell commandment of our Lord, "Go
ye therefore and make disciples of all na-
tions," was the chief business of Christ's
church, and that our people had to no small
extent paralyzed their power by relegating
the cause of foreign missions to being but

186

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

"one of the benevolences," instead of being
the chief work for which the Church of Jesus
Christ exists.

Thobum led the agitation for a resident
bishop on our foreign mission fields.
Further his famous article in the Methodist
Review, on "Methodist Episcopacy in
Transition," in 1895, initiated the agitation
which after the lapse of thirteen years cul-
minated in our present "plan of residential
episcopal supervision," which in all its main
features is what he had outlined. In his
persistent agitation for such residential and
closer supervision both abroad and at home,
was he not away ahead of his time? Is not
his statesmanlike vision now manifest to the
whole church?

Thobukn the Prophet

"I have ordained thee as a prophet to the
nations." God had spoken into the heart of
Thoburn as surely as into the heart of Jere-
miah. To Thoburn the word "prophet"
meant not only "foretelling" but "forth-tell-
ing" God's gospel message through the in-
spiration of the Holy Spirit. He believed
himself as much a man sent from God as

186

TRIBUTE FROM BISHOP WARNE

was John, and therefore on a moral pedestal
above that of the kings of the earth. He
believed that it was never necessary, even to
demon worshipers, to prove the existence of
a Supreme Being, but that the story of a
divine Saviour everywhere in the non-Chris-
tian world was new. In Christ's holy life,
dying love, risen power, and enthroned glory
he always found a thrilling message of Kght,
life, hope, salvation, and holy trivimph for
"every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and
people" on the face of the whole earth.
Therefore when preaching, his voice, coun-
tenance, and message were all aglow with
prophetic and holy enthusiasm. His favorite
testimony was "While I preach the Man of
Calvary is by my side" ; and in this assurance,
so real to him, the great secret of his life is
told. He believed that the time would surely
come when there would be a Stephen filled
with the Holy Spirit bearing witness on the
streets of every village on the face of the
whole earth.

A word of personal testimony : Well do I
remember how, in my young manhood, I
came under the spell of Bishop Thoburn's
virile prophetic messages, and how I was

187

THOBURN— CALLED OF GOD

made to see, in their ignorance, the helpless,
hopeless, hungry miUions of India, and also
that they would yet have an eternal inherit-
ance in and with Jesus Christ; and that I
might help a little I answered the call, and
with many others have given my hf e to bring
to pass the things that Bishop Thoburn saw
in vision. Truly, he was a prophet to the
nations; many of his prophecies have been
fulfilled, and others are very rapidly being
fulfilled. O how we love him I

Let me close with what I think is Bishop
Thoburn's greatest challenge to the Chiu'ch
of Jesus Christ. It sets forth his optimism,
breadth of outlook for Christ's church, evan-
gelistic fervor, world-embracing statesman-
ship, prophetic vision, and apostolic enthu-
siasm. Here it is:

The Signs of the Times, the Lessons
OF the Past, the Indications of the

FUTUKE, THE CaLL OF PeOVIDENCE, AND

THE Voices Which Come Boene to Us by
EvEEY Beeeze, and feom Eveey Nation
Undee Heaven, All Alike Bid Us Lay
OuE Plans on a Scale Woethy of Men
Who Expect to Conquee a Woeld.

188

3 2044 029 919 651

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